Diyarbakır Walls
Diyarbakir Castle or Diyarbakir walls is a historical building located in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. It consists of two parts, the inner castle and the outer castle. The main entrances in the walls are Dağ Kapı (Harput Gate), Urfa Gate (Greek Gate), Mardin Gate (Tell Gate) and New Gate (Dicle-Irmak-Şat Kapı). The walls, which are about nine thousand years old, are the longest and widest defensive wall in the world after the Great Wall of China. UNESCO included the building on the World Heritage Tentative List in 2000, and registered it as a World Heritage Site in 2015. In addition, the Goat Bastion, which is a very old structure of Diyarbakır, is located in the district of Sur. The walls consist of two parts, the Inner Castle and the Outer Castle. The walls of the castle were damaged in the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes.
It is considered to be one of the longest, widest and strongest walls in the world after the Great Wall of China. It is not known who first started to build the Diyarbakır city walls and in what period, but the Inner Castle is thought to be the first settlement of the city. In the sources, there is no information about the city before the Roman period, except that the Hurrians lived in the region in 2000 BC, the Hurrian city was surrounded by a wall, and the old city wall was repaired in the 9th century BC when it was the capital of the Bit-Zamani tribe. There are three different information about the interventions in the Roman period in 330-338 and 349 AD.
