Amasra

Amasra occupies a small peninsula on the southern Black Sea, with sheltered harbours on either side of its rocky promontory and a fortified island joined to the shore. Founded as Amastris, the city took its name from a Hellenistic queen who brought together settlements along this coast. Its walls and citadel guarded an anchorage between the sea and the wooded mountains of Paphlagonia.

In the later Middle Ages Genoese merchants held Amasra as a fortified trading post within their Black Sea network. Known to them as Samastro, the port stood among settlements that linked Italian merchants to the resources and markets of the Black Sea basin. Their walls and towers protected a harbour connected to other Genoese settlements across the water. After taking Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II turned his attention to the Anatolian coast; in 1460 Ottoman forces captured Amasra. The fall of the port removed a Genoese foothold on the southern shore and preceded the Ottoman advance against neighbouring principalities and Trebizond.

The town retained the imprint of its Greek, Byzantine and Genoese past under its new rulers. A former church became a mosque, while the fortifications continued to define the narrow peninsula. Amasra's sheltered bays remained a meeting place of maritime routes and the roads leading inland through the mountains.