Tea on the ramparts
A tea garden inside the Byzantine citadel, with the city, the port and the Black Sea at your feet.
Babbsack — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0
The best glass of tea in Rize is drunk on ramparts fifteen centuries old. The inner citadel is attributed to the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527-565) and the lower castle to the 13th century, yet what draws the townspeople up here every evening is not the history but the garden: benches, sunshades and tea that never stops coming inside the fortress, and beyond them the whole city, the port, the Black Sea and the tea terraces climbing the mountains at your back. The history is still there, though reading it takes a little patience. The citadel sits on a hill roughly 150 metres high, with walls of dressed stone and rubble two to three metres thick and up to twenty metres tall in places, punctuated by five semicircular towers and an entrance on the eastern side. The lower castle, whose walls once ran down to the shore, has been swallowed by the modern town: sections lie beneath streets and apartment blocks, and only stretches of the western wall and a few tower stumps remain visible. The southern walls were restored in 1989 and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism began a further restoration in 2011, so expect a tidy, planted fortress rather than brooding ruins. Be honest with yourself: this is neither Topkapı nor Trabzon's castle. A circuit of the walls takes a quarter of an hour; everything else is the view and the tea. Even so, it is the finest place to understand Rize with your own eyes - a narrow city squeezed between mountain and sea, and the wall of green that explains why Turkish tea carries this town's name. On foot from the centre it is a steady ten- to fifteen-minute climb, or a few minutes by taxi, and it pairs naturally with Rize Museum, a few minutes' walk back down towards the centre. For families: the approach is steep and the castle has plenty of steps, so a pushchair is more burden than help, but the garden itself is safe, enclosed and popular with children. Remember that Rize is Turkey's rainiest city and the panorama can vanish into cloud at any hour of the year; bring an umbrella and aim for the hour before sunset on a clear day. Entry is free - you pay only for the tea.
A tea garden inside the Byzantine citadel, with the city, the port and the Black Sea at your feet.
Three-metre-thick walls and five semicircular towers whose origins go back to the sixth century.
The clearest spot in town to see the green terraces that made Rize the capital of Turkish tea.
Kale Mahallesi, Rize Merkez
Yes, but as a rest stop with a view rather than a historic monument. The wall circuit takes a quarter of an hour at most, and the garden is enclosed and safe for children, though the climb is steep and stepped - leave the pushchair and take a taxi to the gate. On a rainy or foggy day, skip it; without the view there is not much left.
They are different things entirely. The castle is a free hour inside the city with a view over Rize and the sea; Ayder is a full day out by car (about an hour and a half each way) to alpine meadows and hot springs. If you have one night in Rize, give the castle your first afternoon and Ayder your second day.
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