Sivas, despite at first sight its somewhat concrete and anarchic appearance, is a very nice city. I arrived there one May evening and immediately discovered the lively atmosphere around the busy shopping area of Atatürk Avenue and the rather chic Hükümet Square. I ate in a splendid Lokanta and looked forward with anticipation to my visit the next day.
It was the number of mosques, madrasas, baths and caravanserais from the Seljuk and Ottoman eras which surprised me the most. Sivas abounds with historical monuments! The Gök Medrese and the Grand Mosque, in their simplicity, are particularly impressive.
I was also rather captivated by the city's museum, which plunges visitors into the history of modern Turkey. The first section shows the Ottoman heritage of Sivas – which I'd partly seen in buildings that morning – and the second section is concerned with the Sivas Congress, a key part of Turkish unification in 1919.