Ancient City and Castle of Kastabala
/ By Josh
A castle-topped ruined city bearing all the hallmarks of a wealthy classical city with its great baths, temples, theatres, and colonnades.
Tucked between the popular destinations of Adana, Antakya, and Gaziantep, Osmaniye is a place easily overlooked. While Osmaniye can only boast a fraction of the number of attractions that its neighbors can, there is still a number of interesting sights. As Osmaniye sits on an ancient route connecting the Mediterranean to the plains of northern Syria and Mesopotamia you’ll find signs of stone age settlements, Hittite ruins, abandoned Roman cities, and numerous castles from various kingdoms and cultures scattered among Osmaniye’s wooded hills.
The lowlands of Osmaniye are blazing hot in the summer but the province’s high mountain meadowlands and lakeside parks offer cool retreats for locals and visitors alike. While Osmaniye may be a land of turnip and peanut farms, it shares in the best of Turkey’s culinary traditions with excellent southern style kebap and baklava as well their own variety of simit and copious amounts of sticky sweet halka tatlısı.
