Before 2000 BC, a settlement of the apparently indigenous Hatti people was established on sites that had been occupied even earlier and referred to the site as Hattush. The Hattians built their initial settlement on the high ridge of Büyükkale. The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the sixth millennium BC. In the 19th and 18th centuries BC, merchants from Assur in Assyria established a trading post there, setting up in their own separate quarter of the city. The center of their trade network was located in Kanesh (Nea) (modern Kültepe). Business dealings required record-keeping: the trade network from Assur introduced writing to Hattusa, in the form of cuneiform. Read more
'Hattusa' (URU''a-at-tu-a'' ; ''attua'') was the capital of the Hittite Empire. The site is located near the modern-day town and district center of Bogazkale (), formerly named Bogazköy, in Corum Province in north-east Central Anatolia, Turkey, at a distance of 90 km from the province seat of Corum. The region is set in a loop of the Kzl River (''Marashantiya'' in Hittite sources and Halys in Classical Antiquity) in central Anatolia, about 200 km east of Ankara.
Hattusa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1986.