Around 40,000 people visited the 80-million-year-old site in Bartin province in the first four months following the official opening, according to a local tourism official.<\/p>\n
In Bartin’s Guzelcehisar beach on the Black Sea coast, the columns were formed when lava flowed from volcanos and crystalized as it cooled, providing a stunning landscape with geometric columns.<\/p>\n
The columns turn the area — around 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) away from the city center — into “a wonder of nature”, Fuat Dursun, the provincial director of culture and tourism, told Anadolu Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest feature of here is having 80-million-year-old basalt columns. Lava flowing from volcanos crinkled and formed fracture pattern. Thus, pentagonal and hexagonal-shaped columns were formed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Highlighting that the formations in Guzelcehisar were different than the other examples in the world, Dursun added: \u201cBasalt columns in the world are horizontal, our columns are both horizontal and vertical.\u201d<\/p>\n
For this reason, the authorities wanted to open the area for tourism as well as to provide an added value for the local people under a project carried out together with the Bartin University, he noted.<\/p>\n
Citing the number of visitors which is a significant figure, Dursun said: \u201cOur goal is to increase the number to 100,000-200,000, to open the basalt columns for international tourism and to make it a focus of interest for domestic and foreign tourists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restaurants, cafes and bungalow houses are going to be built around the wooden walking trails as part of the project.<\/p>\n
Basalt columns are seen in Northern Ireland, Scotland and California in the world, while they are only seen in Bartin in Turkey, according to the local official.<\/p>\n
The area was designated as a natural monument by the Turkish Agriculture and Forestry Ministry in 2017.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rare basalt columns in northern Turkey has become one of the most popular tourist destinations since it was opened for tourism earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,118,895,163,117,174],"tags":[78200,39564,77182],"class_list":["post-61960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-hot","category-life","category-recommendations","category-travel","category-turkey-daily","tag-bartin","tag-tourism","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}