Dogubayazit Attractions

Dominated by the towering peak of Ararat, present-day Dogubayazit, chief town of the Dogubayazit basin, has only been in existence since after the First World War. The chronology of settlement, precise location, even the name of its earliest predecessor, are shrouded in mystery, there being no written records prior to the region's absorption into the Ottoman Empire. Some 7km/4.5mi to the southeast, close to the remains of a Urartian settlement, are the ruins of a town dating from about 1064 (now called Eski Dogubayazit), often, though wrongly, said to have been founded by Bayazit I sometime around 1390. It was abandoned in 1928 and its inhabitants forcibly resettled in the valley, ostensibly because there was too little scope for developing the existing town.