Van Fortress

Feel the stone under your shoes first. It is pale, worn limestone, polished smooth in places by centuries of feet and wind. Below you, the ground falls away toward a flat plain of grass and broken walls. Beyond it, a sheet of blue water stretches almost to the horizon. That is Lake Van. And the long ridge of rock you are standing on has held a fortress for close to three thousand years.

This ridge is a natural island of stone. It rises sharply from the flat shore and runs east to west for more than a kilometre. Its sides are steep, and in places they are nearly vertical. Ancient engineers did not need to build a mountain here. They only needed to shape one. That is exactly what the people of Urartu did, beginning in the ninth century before Christ.

Urartu is a name many visitors have never heard, so here is a short introduction. It was an Iron Age kingdom of the eastern highlands, in the lands around Lake Van and the Armenian plateau. It was a rival of Assyria, the great power of ancient Mesopotamia. The Urartians called their land Biainili. Many scholars believe the modern name Van comes from that old word. Their capital city was called Tushpa, and this rock was its citadel.

Now walk toward the western end of the ridge, near its foot. There you will find a wall built from enormous blocks of stone. Some of them are several metres long. This is often called Sardur's Wall, after King Sarduri the First, one of the early Urartian rulers. Look closely at the blocks. They carry inscriptions in cuneiform, the wedge-shaped writing of the ancient Near East. Here is the first surprise. These texts are written in Assyrian, the language of Urartu's great enemy.

Why would a king write in his rival's language? At that early stage, the Urartians had borrowed writing itself from Assyria. Their own written language came a little later, still using the same wedge-shaped signs. So these blocks are more than foundations. They mark the moment when a highland kingdom began to record its own story in stone. Kings who came later left many more inscriptions across this rock, now in the Urartian language.

The Urartians were skilled workers of stone. As you climb, notice the flat terraces, the cut steps, and the square sockets carved into the bare rock. These once held beams, walls, and buildings that have long since vanished. Much of what survives here is not built on the rock. It is carved into it. The rock itself was the material, the foundation, and the defence, all at once.

The most dramatic examples are the rock-cut chambers. These are rooms hollowed directly out of the cliff face, with doorways opening onto narrow ledges. Many scholars consider them royal tombs or ceremonial halls of the Urartian kings. One group is linked to King Argishti the First. A long inscription near it records the deeds of his reign, his campaigns, and his conquests. Be careful near these ledges. The drop below is real, and the railings are limited.

Now for the second surprise, and it is on the southern face of the rock. High on the cliff, there is a large smooth panel with a long inscription. It is not Urartian at all. It belongs to Xerxes the First, a king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, which ruled much of the ancient world in the fifth century before Christ. The text is written in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.

In the inscription, Xerxes explains that his father Darius had ordered a niche to be carved here, but left it without words. Xerxes says that he finished the work. So a Persian emperor recorded his family's name on a cliff that Urartian kings had shaped centuries earlier. By then, Urartu had already fallen. The rock had become a page that each new power wanted to sign. The panel is best seen from the ground below, so look up from the southern side.

After the Persians, many more rulers held this ridge. Armenian kingdoms, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, and Ottomans all used it in turn. Each left its own layer. On the summit you will see the remains of later walls, towers, and mudbrick and stone repairs. Some sections show older Urartian blocks at the base and newer masonry above. Learn to read these layers, and the walls become a timeline you can touch.

Now turn and look south, at the wide plain below the rock. It looks almost empty today. Low mounds, scattered stones, and the shapes of a few domed buildings rise from the grass. This was once the Old City of Van, a walled town of houses, markets, churches, and mosques. It was largely destroyed during the fighting of the First World War, around 1915. Afterward, the modern city of Van grew up again a few kilometres to the east.

A small number of buildings still stand in that plain. Several Ottoman-era mosques have been restored, and their domes and minarets are clear landmarks from the summit. Other structures are only outlines and foundations. Archaeological work continues across the site, so you may see fenced areas, survey markers, or excavation trenches. It is a quiet place now. Often the only sounds are the wind, birds over the reeds, and distant traffic from the new city.

Before you leave, stay at the top for a few minutes. Face the lake. Its water is strongly alkaline and very salty, and few fish can live in it. On a clear day, its colour shifts from pale turquoise near the shore to deep blue farther out. Behind you, the plain holds the outline of a lost town. Beneath your feet, the stone still carries the marks of Urartian chisels. As you walk down, run a hand along a carved step. Someone shaped it, nearly three thousand years ago, for exactly this purpose.