Eynesil Castle

Eynesil Castle, locally known as Eynesil Kalesi, lies in the city of the same name, in the province of Giresun in Turkey.

Eynesil Castle was originally the castle of a village called Koralla, which was may have been an ancient Greek settlement. Koralla Castle was probably built by the Grand Komnenoi (a Byzantine Greek noble family, who were emperors of Trebizond) during the 13th/14th century. Even after the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, the village retained a Greek majority population.

In the early 16th century, the village still counted 134 Christian and only 7 Muslim families. Later, the castle became a coastal stronghold of the Üçüncüoğlu family. The Pasha of Trebizond attacked the castle in 1811, with a small fleet and Adjarian troops, in order to crush the family. Following its capture, he thoroughly destroyed it, together with the village. The castle remained a ruin and the village also never recovered, its traces mostly disappearing because of the construction of a new coastal highway in the 1950s.

The castle ruin is situated on a small cape, some 20 meters high. It probably had a middle and an outer bailey. There are traces of a small church and cisterns. In recent decades, the ruin was consolidated in such a way that it is very hard to see what is original and what is modern. Too bad.

Eynesil Castle can freely be visited. A nice sea-side location, but not very interesting.

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