Black Sea Region

Driving east from Istanbul toward the coast, the landscape changes within hours. The dry steppe of central Anatolia gives way to rolling green hills, forest canopy, and the first steady mizzle of what locals call "the Black Sea character" — a weather pattern that dumps more than 2,000mm of rain a year on these slopes. The Pontic Mountains run parallel to the shore, their lower slopes thick with tea bushes and hazelnut groves, their upper reaches forested in beech and spruce. It is one of the most wooded coastlines in the Mediterranean basin, and unlike anywhere else in Turkey.

Trabzon and the legacy of Trebizond

The region's historic heart is Trabzon, a port city founded by Greek colonists in the eighth century BC and later the capital of the Empire of Trebizond — one of the successor states that outlasted Byzantium by two centuries. The 13th-century Church of Hagia Sophia, built during that empire, stands in the hills above the city. Its frescoes include a rare depiction of the Byzantine emperorManuel I Komnenos. Below the citadel, the bazaar quarter still follows medieval street patterns, its tight lanes lined with workshops where coppersmiths and woodturners work much as their predecessors did. The city makes a natural base for visiting Sumela Monastery, a Greek Orthodox complex founded in the fourth century AD and carved into a sheer cliff face in the Macka district's mountain forest.

The tea coast

East of Trabzon, the road runs through Rize Province, where terraced hillsides are planted in tea as far as the eye can see. Turkey's tea industry was deliberately developed here in the 1930s after the state's early republic needed a domestic crop. Smallholder farms still dominate production; fresh leaf is bought by cooperatives and dried in factories at harvest. The result is a mildly astringent, dark brew served in small tulip glasses, drunk throughout the day withConversation and little ceremony. In the coastal towns of Rize, Ardesen and Findikli, wooden houses with elaborate bay windows — half-timbered, often painted red or green — crowd the seafront. Fishing boats come in before dawn. The smell of grilling anchovies, known locally as hamsi, drifts from every quayside in autumn and winter.

Taste of the coast

The Black Sea kitchen is distinct. Anchovies are the foundational ingredient — fried in cornmeal, stuffed with rice and walnuts, baked in börek. The region's trademark dish, muhlama, is a pot of slowly melting, richly browned local cheese, cooked at the table over a brazier and eaten with torn bread. Laz böreği follows a similar principle: thin pastry layers sandwiching white cheese, grilled until bubbling. Laz pasta — a dense spiced bulgur dish — reflects the same Aegean and Laz cultural overlap found in the region's music and dialect. On the table alongside, expect local honey from the mountain apiary, a sharp white cheese made from jersey cow's milk, and thin-crusted pide bread baked in wood-fired ovens.