Kalepark



Kalepark (originally called Leonkastron; and later Güzelhisar, meaning "Beautiful Castle" in Turkish) was procured and further fortified by Genoese merchants as a medieval fortress on the east side of Trabzon, Turkey. The fortress was built on a rocky outcrop strategically overlooking both harbors of the city: the summer harbor at a distance to the west, and the winter harbor just to the east of it. A few hundred meters to the west of Leonkastron lay the "Venetian Castle", which was a competing fortified trading outpost. In the following centuries many other Europeans settled on the streets between these forts - such as traders from Lviv in Ukraine - and it thus became known as the "European quarter".

In the 1740s, a palace was built for the Ottoman Governor Ahmet Paşa at the same location, which was destroyed by a fire in 1790.

The castle was frequently shelled during World War I by the Russian naval forces, due to its easily accessible location near the Black Sea coast.