Van

The rock above the plain carried Tushpa, capital of the kingdom of Urartu, from the 9th century BC. Its kings cut chambers and inscriptions into the limestone, including a trilingual text left by the Persian king Xerxes, and irrigated the plain with a canal attributed to Queen Semiramis in legend but built under Urartian rule. The kingdom fell in the 6th century BC, and the region passed to Medes, Persians, Armenian dynasties, Rome and Byzantium in turn.

For centuries Van was a centre of Armenian life, the heart of the province of Vaspurakan; the Artsruni kings built the church on Akdamar in the 10th century. Seljuks, Kurdish emirates, the Kara Koyunlu, Safavid Persia and the Ottomans each held the town, which the Ottomans secured in the 16th century and made the seat of an eastern province. By the 19th century the walled city below the rock was a crowded place of churches, mosques, gardens and bazaars, with mixed Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish quarters.

That city did not survive the First World War. In 1915 fighting between Armenian defenders and Ottoman forces was followed by the wider deportations and massacres of the Armenian genocide, and Russian and Ottoman armies took the town in turn; when the fighting ended the old city was in ruins and largely emptied. Rather than rebuild on the site, the republic laid out a new city on the plain a few kilometres east, which is the Van of today. A severe earthquake in October 2011 destroyed buildings across the province and killed hundreds of people, and much of the city's housing dates from the rebuilding that followed.

Van has a Kurdish majority, and Kurdish music, dance and the dengbêj tradition of long narrative singing are part of everyday life alongside Turkish. Nevruz, on 21 March, is the biggest public celebration of the year, marked with crowds, fires and line dancing. Weddings are large and loud, held in halls or in the open, with drum and zurna players and dances in which the whole party joins hands.

The city's best-known symbol is the Van cat, a chalky-white breed whose eyes are blue or amber and sometimes one of each, with a reputation for swimming, bred and studied at a centre on the university campus since 1995. The breakfast table is almost as strong an emblem: eating a long, slow, many-dish breakfast is a social ritual here rather than a meal, and visitors are judged partly by how they approach it.

Manners are conservative and hospitable. Guests are pressed with tea, food and further invitations; elders are greeted first; and modest dress is normal in the streets. The population is young, the university large, and student life gives the centre a livelier evening feel than the city's reputation suggests, though cafés and tea houses rather than bars are where it happens.

About half a million people live in the central districts of İpekyolu and Tuşba that make up the city, and roughly 1.1 million in Van province, one of the youngest populations in Turkey. Most residents live in apartment blocks built since the 2011 earthquake, spreading east and south of the old grid, while villages around the lake remain small and agricultural.

The economy runs on trade, public employment and farming. The border crossing with Iran at Kapıköy and the road to Tehran have long made Van a trading city, and cross-border commerce shapes its markets; livestock, dairy, cereals and fruit come from the plain and the highlands; and the provincial administration, hospitals and Yüzüncü Yıl University employ many thousands. Tourism is growing but remains seasonal. Unemployment is high and many families rely on relatives working in western Turkey or abroad.

Daily rhythm is shaped by long breakfasts, a working day that ends with tea and a walk on the main avenue, and winters that keep people indoors for months. Heating costs, earthquake resilience and water levels in the lake, which have risen in some years and flooded shoreline property, are recurring local concerns. The city is also a transit point for migrants crossing from Iran.

Breakfast is the meal Van is known for nationally. The spread covers the table: otlu peynir, a cheese matured with wild herbs from the mountains; kavut, a toasted flour and butter paste; murtuğa, flour cooked in butter with egg; honey in the comb with thick clotted cream; olives, tomatoes, cucumber, butter, jams, walnuts and hot bread, with tea refilled throughout. Whole streets of salons serve nothing else.

The everyday kitchen is lamb-based and thrifty. Keledoş, a slow-cooked dish of pulses, dried yoghurt, wild greens and meat, is the city's own; su böreği, sheets of boiled pastry layered with cheese, is made for guests; and lamb is grilled as kebab or stewed with pulses. Village bread is baked in a tandır oven, and dried yoghurt and ayran appear at most meals.

The lake supplies the inci kefali, a pearl mullet that migrates up the freshwater streams to spawn in May and June, eaten fried or salted. Van's highland honey and its walnuts are sold in the bazaar, and sweets tend to be syrup pastries or milk puddings. Tea is drunk strong and constantly, and alcohol is served in relatively few places in the city.