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Mount Ararat
Turkey's highest peak, the snow-crowned volcano of biblical fame
Mount Ararat is the highest mountain in Turkey, a massive snow-crowned volcano rising to 5,137 metres in the country's far east, near the borders of Armenia and Iran. Standing alone above the surrounding plain, its glaciated cone dominates the horizon for a hundred kilometres and carries deep significance for several cultures - most famously as the traditional resting place of Noah's Ark in the Book of Genesis. To Armenians, for whom it is a national symbol, the mountain lies just beyond a closed border.
Ararat is a dormant stratovolcano, the larger of a pair - Greater and Lesser Ararat - built up where the Arabian plate collides with Eurasia, the same crustal squeeze that crumples eastern Anatolia and makes it prone to earthquakes. Greater Ararat wears a permanent ice cap, one of the few in the Middle East, though it has shrunk markedly in recent decades. The volcano's last significant activity included an eruption and devastating landslide in 1840 that destroyed villages on its flanks. Its great isolation and bulk make it a formidable, weather-prone climb.
The first recorded ascent came in 1829, when the German naturalist Friedrich Parrot and the Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian led a party to the summit. The mountain's biblical reputation has drawn centuries of expeditions hunting for the Ark, none yielding credible evidence. Long an emblem of Armenian identity - it appears at the centre of the national coat of arms - Ararat today sits within Turkish territory, near a sensitive frontier, climbed by mountaineers under permit.