Gordion (Polatlı)

West of Ankara, in the open steppe near the town of Polatlı, Gordion was the capital of ancient Phrygia — and since 2023 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is the day-trip in the western direction: a multi-layered mound of a city that ruled central Anatolia in the Iron Age, ringed by the great burial mounds of its kings. The largest of them, the "Midas Mound," holds a wooden burial chamber that is the oldest standing wooden building in the world. The setting is elemental — low tumuli rising from flat farmland — and the history runs from King Midas to Alexander the Great.