Elazığ is a fine city by itself, but the experience grows considerably if you take a short busride uphill to Harput, the "old city". It has a fortress of great antiquity, a number of fine mosques (one of them amongst the oldest in the country), a hamam-now-restaurant, and a number of graves of Islam saints. And some great views. The province governor is building a fine office too, it was not quite finished when I visited in September 2006. And then there is one of the best "museums" that recreate a house (of a rather wealthy family) as it was eighty years or so ago that I have ever seen in the country.

Since I often get complaints that some city is "really" Swiss, or Buddhist (to name a few ironic variants on a recurrent theme) here are some of the peoples that reigned here: Urartians, Romans, Byzantines, Hamdanids, Seljuks, Armenians, Persians, Ortokids, Eretnids, Timurids, Akkoyunlu, Safawids, Ottomans. Take your pick.

NOTE: The bold texted pictures open, often large, sub-galleries.