İskilip lies on a well-watered plain, several miles off the road between Çankırı and Amasya among wooded hills, at the foot of a limestone rock crowned by the ruins of an ancient fortress now filled with houses.

By one calculation, the geographic center of all land area on Earth surface, is a mile or so to the northeast of Iskilip district, not far from Başmakçı, making it the centre of the world.

[5] People have been attracted to the saline springs of İskilip since the earliest times, and the town stands on a route through the mountains to the Black Sea coast.

Therefore, this is one of the longest-settled areas of Anatolia; copper was smelted here in ancient times, when the plain was settled by the Hittite and Hatti civilizations (from 3000 BC).

But the castle of İskilip had been seriously damaged, and most of the population dispersed during the fighting, never to return, perhaps wisely, as the area, in 1402, was the scene of even more terrible warfare between Bayezid's Ottomans and the Tatars of Timur following the Battle of Ankara.

Following the Ottoman Interregnum, rule was restored by Bayezid's son Mehmed I, but İskilip's misfortune persisted, with destruction returning in 1509 in a large earthquake known as the little Armageddon.

The cuisine is typical of much of Anatolia, including a particularly renowned rice-based dolma, wheat soup keshkek, fruit syrup (pekmez), a dry egg-noodle erişte, spice-cured beef pastırma, roasted chick peas leblebi, a round loaf called Okkalık, and, of course, a local kebab, which is a meat-and-vegetable casserole.