Just to the north of the modern-day city of Adana in south central Turkey, nestled amongst

a series of steep hillsides and imposing cliff faces, lie the ruins of an ancient fortress.

The castle of ceased in the foothills of the Torres Mountains, offers spectacular views of the surrounding countryside,

neighbouring castles perched

atop similar rocky outcrops, but most importantly of all, the pathways and gateways to

Silesia that once crisscrossed the landscape of this mountainous and ancient place.

Inhabited continuously for almost 5,000 years, the citadel at Cece was once home to Hittite settlers,

manning the frontier territories of their state against attacks from the Egyptian-held Levant.

Later, it was held by Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, until its conquest by the Arabs during the 8th century.

An important defence and gateway into the

Silesian highlands, Cease was recaptured in 962 by the Byzantine Emperor,

Nisophorus Focass, who recognised the tactical and strategic importance of its location.

It is then, from the 10th century onwards, as the Byzantines resettled imperial subjects from elsewhere in the

empire into Cilicia, that the castle entered its most captivating phase of all. From the early 12th century

until it was finally destroyed by the Mamlux in 1375, Cease was the capital and focal point of an

independent Christian nation that once clung

onto existence in the Torres Mountains in the adjacent Seleisian Plain. It was a state founded

by those same settlers who had been forcibly and voluntarily relocated into the area by the Byzantine

government, yet far outlived their original imperial overlords in the area.

We know it today as the Armenian Kingdom of Silesia,

though in its heyday, its rulers for so long during the Middle Ages.

The castle at Cease is one of the largest and most impressive

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