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Samsun is the largest city on the Black Sea coast and it is a major commercial port and an industrial city. It is an ancient city which has been totally modernized and has all the traits of a commercial port. The city, with the name Amissos in ancient times, is the port where products of the whole region are exported and it hosts the annual Samsun Trade and Industry Fair.
Samsun was important during the Turkish Independence War as the spot where Ataturk landed on May 19, 1919 to organize the defense of the country. The extraordinary equestrian statue of Ataturk at the city park stands as a memorial of that day. At the Ataturk Museum, there are many memorial objects from the Turkish War of Independence. In the other museum of the city, the Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum, there are many finds from the environs and ancient Samsun (Amissos), especially of importance are the artifacts and jewelry. At Ikiztepe, there was an significant excavation, and an archaeological site from the Early Bronze Age was found. It is important since it displays the history of the Black Sea Region.
Bafra, a little town to the west of Samsun is famous for its tobacco, caviar and thermal springs. You can see a 13th century Turkish Bath (Hamam), a mosque-mausoleum-medresse complex from the 15th century, the Paphlagorian Rock Tombs and the ruins of Asar Fortress.
Lake Simenik at Terme is a birds' paradise.
Area: 9579kmsquare
Population: about 1.500.000(with Destricts)
Samsun
historically Amisus, city, capital of Samsun il (province), northern Turkey. The largest city on the southern coast of the Black Sea, Samsun lies between the deltas of the Kizil and Yesil rivers. Amisus, which stood on a promontory just northwest of the modern city centre, was founded in the 7th century BC; after Sinop it was the most flourishing Milesian colony on the Euxine (Black) Sea. After Alexander the Great's conquest of Asia Minor in the 4th century BC, it came under the kings of Pontus and continued to prosper until burned down by its defenders when captured by the Romans in 71 BC.
Known as Amisos under the Byzantines, it was renamed Samsun by the Seljuq Turks when they took it in the second half of the 12th century. Under Seljuq rule, it surpassed Sinop as a centre of trade between Europe and Central Asia; a large trading colony of Genoese was established there. Taken by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I at the end of the 14th century, it reverted to the Turkmen Candar principality after Ottoman defeat at the hands of the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) in 1402. The city was burned by the Genoese before the Ottomans recaptured it in 1425. The landing of Mustafa Kemal (later called Atatürk) at Samsun on May 19, 1919, to organize national resistance marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence and heralded the establishment of the republic in 1923.
A broad avenue lined with government offices, hotels, and shops traverses modern Samsun east-west along the coast. The city is the metropolitan centre for a fertile agricultural hinterland and the main outlet for the trade of the middle Black Sea coast. Its growth during the later 19th century is associated with the development of tobacco growing in adjoining Bafra ilçe (district) and the use of modern ships on the Black Sea. Its well-protected harbour, modernized and expanded in the 1960s, is the nation's largest port on the Black Sea littoral. Exports include tobacco and wool from the interior and cigarettes, fertilizer, and textiles from the city's factories. Samsun is the terminus of a railway line from inner Anatolia, through which iron ore is brought from Divrigi. The city has air services to Istanbul and Ankara and is also linked by major roads with Ankara and Sivas. Samsun is the site of the May 19 University, founded in 1975.
Samsun il, with an area of 3,975 sq mi (10,296 sq km), is drained by the Kizil and Yesil rivers. A densely populated, fertile region, it constitutes one of the principal sources of Turkish tobacco. Pop. (1990) city, 303,979
From Britannica

• 19 Mayıs
• Alaçam
• Asarcık
• Ayvacık
• Bafra
• Çarşamba
• Havza
• Kavak
• Ladik
• salı Pazarı
• Tekkeköy
• Terme
• Vezirköprü
• Yakakent

• Çakırlar Korusu (Çakırlar Forest)
• Çamgöl and Vezirköprü dinlenme tesisleri(camps)
• Havza and Ladik Kaplıcaları( thermal spring)
• Büyük Cami (Grand Mosque)
• Çiftehamam (Turkish Bath)
• Atatürk and İlkadım Anıtları(monument)
• Etnografya,19Mayıs and Atatürk Museums
• Italian Catholic Church.