Mardin

About Mardin

Built step by step into a hillside, Mardin's honey-coloured stone houses look out over the endless flatness of the Mesopotamian plain. With its narrow, winding lanes, carved stone façades and sunsets watched from rooftop terraces, the city resembles an open-air museum. For centuries a place where Syriac, Arab, Kurdish and Armenian cultures lived intertwined, Mardin has carried that polyphony into its architecture and its kitchen. On the city's outskirts, the Deyrulzafaran Monastery — one of the oldest in the world — continues a tradition of faith fifteen centuries old. With filigree silverwork, sugared almonds and copper workshops, Mardin's bazaar is a labyrinth where patiently wrought craft still breathes.