Çorum
Çorum blends Hittite archaeology, Ottoman bazaars and robust regional cuisine, anchored by a well-regarded museum and proximity to ancient Boğazkale.
Çorum sits on a broad plateau where the Yeşilırmak River bends southward, a working city of wide avenues and layered history that rewards visitors who slow down and look beyond the surface. Its streets carry echoes of Hittite traders, Roman settlers and Ottoman merchants, layered one atop the other across three thousand years of continuous habitation. The pace here is unhurried, the tea culture sincere, and the city's reputation for hospitality is well-earned.
Hittite Heartland
Çorum province contains some of Anatolia's most significant Bronze Age sites. The ancient capital of Hattusa — now called Boğazkale — lies within reasonable distance, its lion gateway and Yazılıkaya rock sanctuary standing where Hittite kings once held audiences. Closer to the city, the archaeological site of Alacahöyük reveals a settlement mound where excavations have uncovered royal tombs, sphinx statues and artifacts now displayed in museums around the world. The land here was worked by agricultural communities for millennia before it became the stuff of textbooks.
The Çorum Museum
The provincial museum occupies a solid modern building near the town centre and holds one of the more comprehensive collections in the Black Sea region. Its Hittite gallery displays relief carvings, bronze weapons and cylinder seals. Roman and Byzantine sections fill adjacent rooms with marble sarcophagi, coin hoards and glassware. Visitors often spend an hour or more moving quietly through the galleries, the labels providing context without overwhelming. The museum courtyard displays larger stonework — column capitals, grave stelae, architectural fragments that once belonged to buildings whose names have been lost.
Food, Market and Street Life
The city's covered market — a domed Ottoman-era structure — opens early to traders and shoppers. Stalls carry dried peppers, local cheeses, and the roasted chickpeas called leblebi for which Çorum is nationally known; the smell of leblebi being warm-turned in rotating drums drifts through the market's covered walkways in the mornings. Regional cuisine favours hearty preparations: slow-cooked lamb, wheat pilafs, tomato and pepper sauces that reflect the agricultural wealth of the surrounding plateau. Çorum's position on historic trade routes gave it a tradition of hospitality feeding passing merchants, and that tradition survives in the city's lokanta and teahouses, where portions are generous and conversation comes easily.
Find it on the map
- Çorum City
Tours that visit Çorum
No tours visit this place just yet — tell us where you want to go and we'll build one. See all tours
Before you book you should know
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Is this trip right for you?
Our groups are capped at eight travellers, which is about a third of what the industry calls a small group. Eight people share one vehicle, one table at dinner and one guide's attention, and the day can change on the road without anybody being left behind. If you are looking for a coach, a fixed script and a microphone, this is not that.
Most days involve real walking, often on ground that was laid two thousand years before walking shoes: marble worn smooth, cobbles, uneven steps and long site paths with little shade. Bring shoes you can spend a morning in.
Some days move between regions and are largely a drive, with stops along the way. Summers are hot — well over 35°C inland — and winters are colder than most people expect, so layers, a hat and sunscreen earn their place in the bag whatever the month.
How demanding a particular trip is, is written on the trip itself: the physical rating in the header, and the day-by-day itinerary above.
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Rooms, and travelling on your own
Trip prices are per person, sharing a twin room. Each traveller picks their own room while booking, so a party can mix the three:
- Twin share — two single beds, shared with someone you are travelling with or with a traveller of the same gender.
- Travelling as a couple — one double room.
- Individual room — a room of your own, for a single supplement on top of the trip price. Availability is limited, and the supplement for a given date is shown next to the option when you book.
Solo travellers are welcome on every departure, and most of our groups have one or two aboard.
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Accommodation
The hotels named in an itinerary are a guideline rather than a guarantee. Where one is full, or has dropped below the standard we booked it for, we substitute a property of a similar standard in the same area — we would rather change the hotel than the trip.
Check-in is usually mid-afternoon. If you arrive early we will ask for the room, but no hotel can promise one before its own check-in time; luggage can normally be left at reception in the meantime. If you want the room from the night before, ask us and we will add the extra night to your booking.
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Passports, visas and insurance
Entry requirements depend on your nationality and change without much notice, so the only reliable source is the official one: the government of the country you are travelling to, and your own foreign ministry's travel advice. Check both before you book a flight.
Many countries ask for a passport valid for at least six months beyond your travel dates, and for blank pages. It is worth looking at yours now rather than at the airport.
We ask every traveller to carry travel insurance covering medical treatment and repatriation, and we would strongly encourage cover for cancellation and for your luggage as well.
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Your departure is guaranteed — the day can change
Once a departure is on the calendar it runs. We do not cancel a trip for want of a minimum number of bookings, so a booked date is one you can plan flights and leave around.
What can move is the shape of a day. Museums and archaeological sites change their hours, roads close, weather turns, a local holiday lands in the middle of the week. Where that happens your guide reorders the day, or swaps a stop for one of the same weight, and tells you why. Changes to a booked itinerary are covered by our Booking Terms & Conditions.
