City
Amasia
Amasya
Listen to the story
Little balls sit on the roofs of the two towers that mark Amasia, an unusual touch for this kind of drawing. The picture also falls between the final letters of the region name Paphlagonia, as if the city belonged there, a link otherwise found only in a list of places compiled in Ravenna, which drew on the same late source. The place is Amasya in Turkey. The Greek geographer Strabo, born here, described his home town in a deep gorge of the river Iris, with a towering rock for a citadel and the rock-cut tombs of the Pontic kings. Lucullus took it in 70 BC after fierce resistance.