The provincial capital of Samsun (pop. 310,000) is the largest city on the north coast and it is also the principal port and commercial center. Every July it hosts a Trade Fair. The importance of Samsun is due principally to its good communications with the Central Anatolian Plateau and these include a trunk road and a railroad line. The coastal
plain around Samsun between the Kizilirmak delta to the west and the Yesilirmak to the east produces tobacco (the best in Turkey), cereals, cotton, poppy seeds and other oil-producing plants. After being processed in the large tobacco and foodstuff factories, they are exported from the port of Samsun. The sandy beaches in the vicinity of the town offer excellent bathing. The site of ancient Amisos, founded in the seventh century B.C. by Greek settlers from Miletus lay some 3km/2mi northwest of the present-day Samsun. Later the site was occupied by Athenian settlers and called Peiraieus (Piraeus). The name Samsun first appears in the year 1331. It was here that Mustafa Kemal Pasa, later Atatürk (equestrian statue in the municipal park) landed on May 19th 1919 to begin his fight against the foreign occupying forces. This day is celebrated throughout Turkey as the "Day of Youth".
The hotel in which Atatürk stayed while in Samsun is now the Gazi Museum. The most notable of the town's older mosques are the Pazar Camii or Market Mosque, built by Mongolian governors in the 14th century and the Great Mosque (Ulu Cami) which dates from the 18th/19th century. The Archeological Museum exhibits material excavated from the Dündar Tepe, the nearby site of ancient Amisos.
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