Boyabat Castle

Boyabat Castle, in the Boyabat municipality, Türkiye, was built by the Paphlagonians. One tradition dates its founding to the 7th century BCE, while another places its origins at about 2,800 years ago.

During the Roman period the site acquired substantial underground works, and late Roman and early Byzantine remains are present within the complex. A large subterranean city beneath the hill contains features linked to both Roman and Byzantine phases; tunnels from the castle side descend to this complex and are dated to Roman times in descriptions of the site.

Control of the area passed into Turkish hands after capture by Gazi Gümüshtigin, the Danishmends’ second leader, a few decades after the 1071 Battle of Manzikert. The locality was subsequently governed by a sequence of Turkish states, including the Danishmends, the Seljuq Turks, the Pervaneoğulları and the Jandarids, before incorporation into the Ottoman Empire and, later, the Republic of Türkiye. The castle appears to have ceased serious military use around 1300 AD. During the Ottoman era the fortress was shaped into the form it largely retains today.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Boyabat belonged administratively to the Kastamonu Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. The castle site was registered for protection on 23 October 1987 and has been used as a museum in recent times. In 2018 it was listed among thirteen notable castles by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.