Van breakfast culture, Van cats, and Lake Van — the largest lake in Turkey and the cradle of Urartian civilisation
Van is a Kurdish-majority city in eastern Turkey on the eastern shore of Lake Van — at 3,713 km², the largest lake in Turkey and the largest soda lake in the world (so alkaline only one fish species, the pearl mullet, can survive in it). Van is most famous globally for the 'Van breakfast' (Van kahvaltısı) — a legendary spread of 30+ small dishes served together: fresh cheese, honey, butter, cream (kaymak), herbs, eggs, and regional specialties. Van cats are a rare breed of white, odd-eyed (heterochromia) cats who swim — native only to this region and extremely prized.
Van was the capital of the Kingdom of Urartu (9th–6th c. BCE) — a major Iron Age civilisation that rivalled Assyria and whose metalwork and irrigation systems influenced later cultures across the Near East. The Van Fortress (Van Kalesi), built on a massive rock above the lake by Urartian kings, has cuneiform inscriptions from the reign of Sarduri I (c.840 BCE). Van was also a major Armenian city (known as Van in Armenian) — one of the six Armenian vilayets of the Ottoman Empire — and the site of fierce fighting during WWI and the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The modern city was built inland after…