A number of similar fortifications were built throughout the Urartian kingdom, usually cut into hillsides and outcrops in places where modern-day Armenia, Turkey and Iran meet.

Successive groups such as the Medes, Achaemenids, Armenians, Parthians, Romans, Sassanid Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Safavids, Afsharids, Ottomans and Russians each controlled the fortress at one time or another.

The lower parts of the walls of Van Citadel were constructed of unmortared basalt, while the rest was built from mud bricks.

[2][full citation needed] At the Van Citadel, there is a "royal stable" (Siršini) of the dimensions of 20 m length, 9 m width and 2,5 m height, carved in rock.

[3] A stereotyped trilingual inscription of Xerxes the Great from the 5th century BC is inscribed upon a smoothed section of the rock face, some 20 meters (60 feet) above the ground near the fortress.