Due to the abundance of trees in the nearby mountains, boat and shipbuilding was the main industry in Sinop for thousands of years. From the Galleys that were rowed by hundreds of slaves in the days of Homer to the sailing ships which kept the spice route active on the Black Sea for hundreds of years. It was an important town. That’s all gone now, but it is still a busy and thriving town. There are some remnants of the old fortress dating back to the 900’s, but it’s all Hustle and bustle now.
There is a prison museum in Sinop, which I went to visit. In the 1860’s the Ottomans decided to introduce policing, a judiciary and prisons as part of its modernisation. The first state prison was built in Istanbul in 1870 and the second at Sinop around 1876. Before then punishment took the form of being shackled and then locked in a dark and dank dungeon, and before that, your sentence would be to row in the Galley ships. The prison closed around 1997 and a few years ago it became a museum. The displays were really interesting, and gave you a good insight into how the prison worked. Fortunately the explanations were in Turkish and English.
