Zile

Zile lies beneath a fortified hill in the fertile plains west of Tokat. Known to the Romans as Zela, it was the site of Julius Caesar's victory over Pharnaces of Pontus in 47 BC, celebrated in the words “I came, I saw, I conquered”. The town continued under Byzantine and Turkish rulers. Its Ottoman buildings included a madrasa founded in 1497 and public baths built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.