Which mountain in Turkey is linked by legend to Noah's Ark?

Ararat, a dormant volcano of 5,137 metres near the Iranian and Armenian borders - and the association is a translation artefact rather than a location. Genesis says the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, which is Urartu, an entire kingdom covering a large region. Naming one peak was a later choice.

It is the Armenian national symbol and Armenians cannot go there. The mountain is on the Turkish side of a border closed since 1993, and it is visible from Yerevan on a clear day - it appears on the Armenian coat of arms, which Turkey has formally objected to on the grounds that it depicts foreign territory. Armenia's reported reply was to ask why Turkey puts a crescent moon on its flag.

Expeditions searching for the ark have been running since the nineteenth century and have produced photographs of rock formations, claimed wood samples that dated wrong, and a great deal of money raised. The best-known formation, the Durupinar site, is a boat-shaped feature that geologists identify as a natural mudflow structure. The mountain is also genuinely difficult - glaciated, high, politically restricted - which has kept the mythology comfortably out of reach of resolution.