Ordu, ancient Kotiora, is a city in the central strech of the Turkish Black Sea coast.

Understand

The old town of Ordu, with the Greek church in the background

Thanks to the fierce local opposition, Ordu features the only urban waterfront along the entire Turkish coast east of Samsun that wasn't significantly altered by the ugly embankments of the coastal motorway.

Ordu has a population of about 230,000 as of 2019. In a 2014 administrative reform, the central district was renamed to Altınordu, but this is used only in official parlance.

Get in

Ordu lies on the coastal highway D010.

The nearest airport is 1 Ordu-Giresun (OGU ^IATA), on an artificial island 18 km east, off the highway to Giresun. Although it is officially classified as an international airport, it receives flights only from Istanbul (both airports, multiple times daily) and Ankara (once daily).

An alternative is Samsun-Çarşamba Airport (SZF ^IATA), 132 km west. It has somewhat more frequent domestic connections, and a daily flight from Düsseldorf, Germany.

See

• Taşbaşı Cultural Centre (Taşbaşı Kültür Merkezi). On a terrace overlooking the sea, it is a former Greek Orthodox church and has a central dome atop.
• Old town. The traditional houses of Ordu, some of which are extremely elaborate, cascade from the hillside around the church down to the coast.

Do

Take the cablecar up to Boztepe, with a great view of the city and the mountains backing it.

Buy

Hazelnut: Ordu is famous for hazelnuts. Turkey as a whole produces about 70 percent of the world's hazelnuts, and over 50 percent of those come from Ordu.

Connect

Ordu's telephone code is (+90) 452.

Go next

• Cape Jason (Yason Burnu) — 15 km from the nearby town of Perşembe in the village of Çaytepe-Aziziye (28 km west of Ordu in total), this cape is named after Jason, the mythological leader of the Argonauts who set sail in pursuit of the golden fleece and went as far as Colchis (modern Georgia) at the ends of the known world to the ancient Greeks. The cape is marked by a well-preserved church built in 1869.

Routes through Ordu

Samsun ← Ünye ( S) ←

W  E

→ Giresun → Trabzon