Bursa and Cumalikizik

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Bursa And Cumalikizik: The Birth Of The Ottoman Empire, 2014); First Ottoman Capital, With A 700 Year Old Village On Uludag Above It · Bursa, Bursa

Bursa is where the Ottoman state started. Orhan took it in 1326 and made it the capital, and the first sultans are buried here, which is why a city of three million has an early-Ottoman core of a density found nowhere else: the Grand Mosque with its twenty domes and a fountain running inside it, the Green Mosque and the Green Tomb tiled in a blue-green that gave them the name, the Muradiye complex where a dozen princes lie in small domed tombs among gardens, and Koza Han, a silk-cocoon caravanserai still trading silk around a courtyard of tea tables. Fifteen kilometres up the slope of Uludag sits Cumalikizik, a village of some seven hundred years of continuous occupation whose cobbled lanes and painted timber houses were inscribed with the city in 2014 - and which now feeds Istanbul weekenders enormous village breakfasts. The mountain above has the ski resort and the longest cable car in Turkiye.

Ulu Cami, Nalbantoglu Mahallesi, Osmangazi, Bursa, Bursa, Bursa, Turkiye

The city is open at all hours. The Grand Mosque and Green Mosque are working mosques, free, and close to visitors around prayers. The Green Tomb, the museums and the Muradiye complex keep daytime hours with a weekly closing day. Koza Han trades through the day. Cumalikizik village is open at all hours and its breakfast houses are busiest at weekends. The Uludag cable car runs daily, weather permitting.

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