Guide
The basalt rocks of Sinop are a field of volcanic rock in the form of basalt columns, and they are on the list of natural monuments in Türkiye.
They lie at Fındıklık near the village of Kurusaray, seventeen kilometres from the centre of Boyabat. The columns are spread across three valleys, standing thirty to forty metres tall with four, five or six sides. Seen from above they are hexagonal and resemble a honeycomb; from the side they appear as long, slender prisms of stone.
Research by Dokuz Eylül University and the mineral research directorate has dated them to between three and five million years old. The way these columns formed, and their appearance and structure, make them a formation rarely met with anywhere in the world.
It has been argued that they should be opened to tourism like their counterpart in Northern Ireland, the Giant's Causeway. To protect the area and make it known, the site was declared a first-degree natural protected area in 1996, and in 2011 an area of 10.25 hectares was declared a natural monument.
- Designated
- 3.01.2011
Entry fee
- Black Sea group 2 · category 1 · Per person
- 65 ₺
