Erzincan, Turkey — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Erzincan known for?

Erzincan's predecessor was destroyed by an earthquake in 1939, and what stands in its place is a modern town laid out on a grid rather than a settlement that grew outward over centuries. The plan is what a visitor notices. Erzincan Province carries the same name as its capital, and the province is read through the town at its centre.

Where is Erzincan?

Erzincan Province lies in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. It is a large unit by area, one of the more extensive provinces in the country, and the distances inside it are the first thing that shapes any plan made for crossing it. Capital and province answer to one name.

Erzincan sits within the province as its administrative centre, and the town is the point everything inside the boundary is arranged around. Eastern Anatolia sets the character. The province belongs to that region rather than to the coastal parts of Turkey, and a traveller arriving here is arriving inland, on ground the Eastern Anatolia label was coined to describe.

The province sits in the temperate band. It lies north of the equator and well clear of the tropics, and that placing is what puts a real seasonal difference into the year rather than an alternation of wet and dry. Its streets are newer than its province.

Erzincan was rebuilt after the 1939 earthquake destroyed what stood before it, so the capital of an old province is a modern town on a grid plan rather than an accumulation of older streets. The grid is the giveaway. Erzincan Province is read from that centre outward.

What is Erzincan like?

A modern town carries an old province. Erzincan was rebuilt after 1939 on a grid, and the character of the capital is therefore of the twentieth century, while the province around it belongs to the older Eastern Anatolia that the region name describes. Turkish is spoken throughout.

It is the language of the capital's offices and of the settlements spread across Erzincan Province, and no other tongue does the administrative work here. The earthquake is part of the story people tell. A town destroyed in 1939 and set out again on a new plan does not carry its past in its buildings, so what remains of the older Erzincan is held in record rather than in stone.

The province is wider than the town. Eastern Anatolia gives Erzincan Province its regional identity, and the country outside the capital is where the province looks least like its rebuilt centre. Two things sit side by side.

There is the planned capital, drawn after the 1939 earthquake, and there is the wider ground of the province in Eastern Anatolia, and a visit that takes in only one of them misses how the place is put together. Turkish links both.

What is the history of Erzincan?

An earthquake ended the old city. What stood at Erzincan before 1939 was destroyed, and the capital that replaced it was laid out on a grid rather than rebuilt along the lines the older town had followed. The province kept its name.

Erzincan Province carried on under the same title after the capital was raised again, and that continuity of name across the break is the clearest thread running through the record of this ground in Eastern Anatolia.

What is the climate of Erzincan?

Eastern Anatolia governs the year here. Erzincan Province lies inland within that region, in the temperate band north of the equator, so the seasons arrive as a genuine cycle of warm and cold rather than as an alternation of wet and dry. The grid city feels it directly.

Erzincan sits open to whatever the region delivers, and a traveller planning a visit should weigh the province's Eastern Anatolia setting, not its size, when deciding what to pack.

How do you get to Erzincan?

All roads into the province meet at the capital. Erzincan is the arrival point for the province, and a journey into this part of Eastern Anatolia ends at the grid-plan town before it goes anywhere else inside the boundary. The province is large.

Distances between the capital and the far edges of Erzincan Province are real, so onward travel from the town is a matter of hours rather than minutes, whichever direction it takes.