Van in 2 days: Akdamar, Tushpa and the Urartian castles

In Van, the day starts at the table. A Van breakfast is not a single dish but a long spread: Van honey, clotted cream, butter, cacık, herbed cheese and braided cheese, murtuğa, kavut, walnut and rose jams and gencirun, with tea from the samovar, lavash and Van çöreği baked in a stone oven. The breakfast salons in the town centre lay out this spread. There is no need to hurry: the first sight of the day, Van Castle, stays open until the evening, and an hour and a half at the table is the easiest way to get to know the city.

Van Castle stands on a conglomerate rock on the shore of Lake Van. Known in Assyrian sources as Turushpa and in Urartian as Tushpa, it was the capital of the Urartian Kingdom, which was centred on the Lake Van basin between the ninth and sixth centuries BC. The Urartian king Sarduri I built the fortress between 840 and 825 BC. Allow three hours to walk among the royal tombs cut into the rock face, the open-air temple of Analı-Kız, the Thousand Steps and the walls. To the north lies the Van Castle Mound, which shows five thousand years of settlement, and to the south the Old City of Van; from the top you can see both. At the foot of the castle stand the remains of the Süleyman Han Mosque, which, according to Evliya Çelebi's records, was repaired in 1534 on the orders of Süleyman the Magnificent. Van Castle was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2016.

After lunch, go down to the Old City of Van south of the castle. The Red Minaret Mosque in the Tebrizkapı quarter is also known as the Sinaniye or Tebrizkapı Mosque. Its minaret dates from the Seljuk period and the mosque from the Ottoman period; because it has no inscription, its construction date is unknown. Although the top of the minaret and the roof of the mosque have collapsed, the brick minaret stands out at once among the ruins on the plain. Walking here lets you read up close the old city you saw from above in the morning.

End the day on the shore of Lake Van. The wide surface of the lake holds the late light and backlights the castle. For dinner, look for Van fish baked in a tandoor at the lakeside restaurants; the pearl mullet lives only in this lake and is kept salted for the spring and summer months when fishing is banned.

Head south early to the Gevaş pier; the boat crossing to the island takes about 20 minutes. The Akdamar Memorial Museum (Church) was commissioned as a palace church by the Armenian king Gagik I Artsruni of Vaspurakan and built by the architect monk Manuel between 915 and 921. The building has a four-leaf clover plan with niches at the corners; the chapel to the north-east, the jamatun to the west and the bell tower to the south were added later. The façades are what hold the eye: their reliefs set scenes from the Bible, prophets, nobles, court life, hunting scenes, animals, and fruit and plant motifs side by side. The church was restored in 2005–2006 and opened as a memorial museum in 2007, and it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2015.

After lunch in Gevaş, head towards Gürpınar. Çavuştepe Castle lies 25 km south-east of Van on the Van–Hakkâri road, on two hills at the western end of Bol Mountain, overlooking the Gürpınar plain. Built in the eighth century BC by the Urartian king Sarduri II, it was called Sardurihinili, meaning 'city of Sardur', in honour of its founder. The site is made up of an upper and a lower castle, with the remains of a temple, cisterns, a palace and storerooms to explore.

Continue south-east on the same road and, at Güzelsu, Hoşap Castle appears on a steep rock north-west of the Hoşap stream. Its history goes back to the Urartians, but its present form dates from the Mahmudi lords, who were tied to the Ottomans. According to the inscription on the gate of the inner castle, Mahmudi Süleyman Bey built it in 1643. Abandoned in the mid-nineteenth century, it has kept its inner buildings. In the late-afternoon light the colour of the rock and the walls changes; it is the last view of the programme before you return to Van.