The fortress of Van was built by the Urartu ruler King Sardur The First on the shores of Lake Van in the ninth century BC. Long ago, at the foot of the fortress was the flourishing ancient city of Van (Tushpa), which was submerged due to rising lake levels. Also, the Armenians, Seljuks and Ottomans who ruled here at different times helped the city fall into decay, so not very many ancient monuments reached contemporaries.
The best preserved of the surviving ruins are the following Thirteenth-century mosques are the Kyzyl Jami, or Red Mosque, and the Ulu Jami, or Great Mosque. Five kilometres from here is Toprakkale, which in the Rasutin was the capital of Urartu.
Antiquities discovered by archaeologists as a result of excavations indicate a high level of civilization in the city of Van. The most valuable works are in the Ankara Archaeological Museum, while the rest are in the local archaeological Museum.
On the west side from the entrance of the fortress is the Sarduri Tower. In it contains cuneiform epitaphs written by Sarduri in Assyrian. Climbing up the north-west corner of the fortress one can see the tombstone of Urartu king Argishti I and cuneiform wall paintings. In the southern part of the fortress Urartu kings' tombs are located.
From above, the fortress is a rock surface, a wasteland with rare fragments of crumbling fortress walls and towers. Also visible from above is the tomb of Abdurahman Ghazi, a saint whose ashes pilgrims specially pilgrims specially come to Van to worship his ashes. To the right of the fortress is a small mosque.
On the southern wall of the cliff there are a large number of staircases that drop off halfway up. Similar staircases can be seen in early nineteenth-century depictions of the Van Cliff of the early nineteenth century. Most likely, they connected the fortress with the city directly, because otherwise, to get to the rock from the city, you had to go around and use a gentler slope.
The lower part of the fortress offers a magnificent panorama of the dead city. The king of Urartu and his retainers lived in the fortress, while the city itself was below. But what has survived to this day is no longer Tushpa, but the remains of a defeated Armenian town in the same place as Tushpa. A big dead wasteland, where time stood still, makes a strong impression on tourists.
At the bottom right of the fortress, the newly rebuilt fortress wall winds like a dazzling white ribbon. The road to the city center goes straight ahead.
