Kemaliye, still widely known by its older name Eğin, is a small town of stacked stone houses on a steep slope above the Euphrates, in the southwestern corner of Erzincan province. It is one of the most photogenic settlements in eastern Anatolia — narrow stepped streets, carved wooden balconies, mineral springs and apricot orchards, all wedged between vertical cliffs and the river.
Kemaliye sits at the head of the Karanlık Kanyon (Dark Canyon), one of the deepest gorges in Turkey, and is the standard starting point for boat trips along it. The town is also famous for the Taş Yolu — the Stone Road — a hand-hewn cliff track linking Kemaliye to upstream villages that became a Turkish engineering folk legend. Allow most of a day from Erzincan: it is around 175 kilometres on slow mountain roads.