Yalova, Turkey — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Yalova known for?

Water heated underground surfaces across Yalova Province, and it is the one thing that turns a crossing of the Sea of Marmara into an overnight stay rather than a change of transport. Ferries do the rest of the work. The port at Yalova handles the traffic between the Marmara shore and the roads inland, so the province is known as much for movement as for its own attractions, which stay modest against Bursa and Kocaeli.

Where is Yalova?

Water bounds it on one side and provinces on the others. Yalova Province takes a strip of the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara and runs inland only a short way, which leaves it compact, a shoreline with a limited depth of land behind it and no great distance from any point to the water. Bursa lies to the south.

Kocaeli closes the eastern side, so the land approach to Yalova comes overland from either of those two directions or across the water from the far Marmara shore. The coastline is the province's working edge, and everything else in Yalova sits within reach of it. Behind the shore the ground rises and the springs appear.

Geothermal water reaching the surface inland from Yalova is the clearest sign of what lies under the province, and it separates this stretch of the Marmara coast from the ordinary port country around it. The Eastern Marmara region of Turkey takes in all of this. Yalova sits within that grouping as a compact working part, a coast, a capital and a band of hinterland pressed between Bursa, Kocaeli and the sea.

Shore to hinterland is a short drive in a province this shallow.

What is Yalova like?

Bathing is the local habit. Geothermal water rising inland from the Marmara shore has given Yalova Province a use that has nothing to do with the sea in front of it, and the traffic it draws is a different kind from the traffic on the ferries. People come to sit in hot water.

That expectation shapes what the province offers a visitor, since a place whose main attraction is a spring is organised around staying still rather than around monuments, walks or a centre to be worked through in a day. The rest of the culture is the culture of a crossing. Yalova works as a port on the Sea of Marmara, and much of what passes through the provincial capital is bound for Bursa, for Kocaeli or across the water, which gives the streets near the berths the practical character of a transfer point.

Little is staged for visitors. The province spent decades administered from elsewhere, first from Kocaeli Province and then from Istanbul Province, and that long dependence left Yalova with the habits of a district rather than the self-regard of an old provincial seat. Independence came late.

What identity the province asserts is built on the water it can heat and the water it sits beside, a pairing no neighbour on the Eastern Marmara coast can claim in quite the same way.

What is the history of Yalova?

The province is a recent creation. Before 1930 the country around Yalova formed a district of Kocaeli Province, and from 1930 until 1995 it was administered as part of Istanbul Province, with no authority of its own on this shore. Separation came in 1995.

Yalova Province was constituted then, with the city of Yalova as its capital, which finally gave the Marmara coast between Bursa and Kocaeli a provincial seat standing on it.

What is the climate of Yalova?

The Sea of Marmara sets the terms. A province this narrow keeps the water within reach of nearly every part of it, and a sea of that size steadies the swing between the seasons along the whole Yalova shore. Heat also comes from below.

The geothermal springs have nothing to do with the weather above them, which is worth separating in a province whose name travels on hot water rather than on sunshine.

How do you get to Yalova?

Most arrivals come over the water. The port at Yalova takes the Sea of Marmara crossings, and for a great many travellers the province is simply the point where a boat is exchanged for a road. The land routes matter too.

Roads run in from Kocaeli on one side and from Bursa on the other, so Yalova Province can be reached without a ferry at all, though the crossing is what the port was built for.