Rail repair shops and a thriving manufacturing industry of rugs, bricks, cement, and cotton and woolen textiles form the mainstays of the city's economy.

The surrounding region is a cereal-producing area with large deposits of iron ore which are worked at Divriği.

In 64 BC, as part of his reorganization of Asia Minor after the Third Mithridatic War, Pompey the Great founded a city on the site called "Megalopolis".

[8] Numismatic evidence suggests that Megalopolis changed its name in the last years of the 1st century BC to "Sebaste", the feminine form of Sebastos, the Greek equivalent of Augustus.

Sebasteia became the capital of the province of Armenia Minor under the emperor Diocletian, was a town of some importance in the early history of the Christian Church; in the 4th century it was the home of Saint Blaise and Saint Peter of Sebaste, bishops of the town, and of Eustathius, one of the early founders of monasticism in Asia Minor.

Initially they hesitated to sack it, mistaking the domes of the city's several Christian churches for tents of military camps.

As soon as they realized that the city was defenceless they burned it for eight days, slaughtered a large part of its population and took many prisoners.

[14] Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the administrative center of the Eyalet of Rum[10] until about the late 19th century.

It was at this congress that Atatürk's position as chair of the executive committee of the national resistance was confirmed (see Turkish War of Independence).

[18] On 2 July 1993, 37 participants in an Alevi cultural and literary festival were killed when a mob of demonstrators set fire to the Madımak hotel in Sivas during a violent protest by some 15,000 members of various radical Islamist groups against the presence of Aziz Nesin.

The deaths resulted in the Turkish government taking a harder stance against religious fanaticism, militant Islam, and antisecularism.

In late 2006, there was a campaign by the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Institute to convert the former hotel into a museum to commemorate the tragedy, now known as the Sivas massacre.

[19] Sivas has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dsb, Trewartha: Dcbo), with warm, dry summers and cold, snowy winters.

It has a four-iwan layout typical of Seljuk madrasas and is fronted by an elaborately-carved entrance portal.

Football is the most popular sport: in the older districts above the city centre children often kick balls around in the evenings in the smallest streets.

The city's football club is Sivasspor, which plays its games at the New Sivas 4 Eylül Stadium.

One distinct feature of Sivas cooking is the use of madimak, which is a local herb used similarly to spinach.