Bartın, Turkey — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Bartın known for?

Bartın Province is one of the smaller provinces of Turkey, a compact piece of country on the Black Sea that surrounds the city of Bartın and takes its name from it. Zonguldak Province adjoins it to the west. What the province is known for follows from that arrangement, one town at its centre, the sea along one edge, and a short run of land between them.

Where is Bartın?

Bartın Province is small, and its shape follows from that. A compact block of country with the Black Sea along one side and the city of Bartın set inside it, the province puts no great distance between its boundary and its seat, whichever edge a traveller starts from. Zonguldak Province holds the ground to the west.

Bartın lies east of it, and that neighbour is the usual reference point when the province is placed along this run of the Black Sea coast. The sea takes the northern edge. Water along one whole side changes what a small province is, because the land then runs back from the shore instead of spreading evenly, and the coast becomes the line everything else is measured against.

Inland it is countryside. The city of Bartın is the single urban centre of any size, and beyond it the province is made up of the smaller settlements that ground of this extent can hold. Scale stays the point.

Bartın Province is one of the more modest provinces of Turkey in extent, so crossing it is a short undertaking rather than a regional expedition, and the Black Sea is never far from wherever a traveller happens to be standing. Zonguldak Province is the one neighbour named on the land side.

What is Bartın like?

Turkish is the language of the province. It is what a visitor hears in the city of Bartın and in the villages around it, and it is the language every sign, timetable and provincial office works in. The city carries the weight.

A province named for its seat tends to run that way, and Bartın Province is small enough that its one centre gathers what there is rather than sharing it with rivals inland. The Black Sea is the other half. Life in a coastal province is shaped by the water on its edge, and here the sea is close to every part of the province rather than to one distant corner of it.

Zonguldak Province sits next door. A boundary shared along the same shore makes the two close neighbours in the practical sense, with the coast running on from one into the other. Expectations should stay modest.

Set-piece attractions are not what Bartın Province trades on, and a visit here is closer to the ordinary texture of a small Turkish province on the sea than to a run through a list of sights. Turkish carries all of it.

What is the history of Bartın?

The name belongs to the city first. Bartın Province surrounds the town of Bartın and carries its name, an arrangement common enough among the provinces of Turkey that the two are read together rather than apart. Zonguldak Province lies to the west.

History here is a coastal matter shared with that neighbour, since the Black Sea is the side of the province that has always faced outward while the land side has faced Turkey.

What is the climate of Bartın?

The Black Sea does the work here. Bartın Province fronts that water along its whole northern edge, and in a province of this size there is no interior deep enough to sit clear of the influence of the sea beside it. The city of Bartın gets the same air as the shore.

Distance from the coast is short. Whatever a season brings arrives off the Black Sea rather than from a dry interior far from any water.

How do you get to Bartın?

Visitors reach Bartın Province by land. The city of Bartın is where a journey into the province ends, since the seat is the point everything in a unit this small is organised around and the only centre of any size inside it. Zonguldak Province lies on the western approach.

Coming from that side means travelling along the Black Sea, while coming from the other direction means crossing into Bartın Province from inland Turkey.