The story of Hevsel Gardens

These gardens were already mentioned in Aramean chronicles of the ninth century BC. The Hevsel Gardens are some seven hundred hectares of fertile land along the Tigris, between the Diyarbakır Fortress and the river. Fed by springs rising from beneath the basalt slope, they kept the city supplied with water and food, and were regarded as sacred, even compared to the Garden of Eden.

When the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II besieged and took the city in 866 BC, he destroyed the gardens as punishment. Spread over five terraces above the floodplain, by 1655 they held orchards, vineyards, rose gardens and basil gardens, and nineteenth-century travellers praised the melons, grapes, apricots and famous watermelons grown on the river's sandy islands. Today this is the largest bird paradise in Southeastern Anatolia, home to more than 180 bird species plus otters, foxes and hedgehogs.

In 2015 the gardens became a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the fortress walls.