Kastamonu
Ottoman Timber Built Provincial Town Below A Byzantine And Seljuk Castle; The Best Preserved Townscape Of Its Kind After Safranbolu · Kastamonu, Kastamonu
Kastamonu is what Safranbolu would be without the coaches. Ninety minutes east of it, in the same forested hills, sits a provincial town of timber-framed Ottoman houses stacked along a river valley under a castle that the Byzantines began and the Seljuks finished, with a covered bazaar still selling copper and a fifteenth-century complex of mosque, medrese and tomb on the slope above. It has almost no foreign visitors, which is the reason to go. Two other things attach to it. In 1925 Ataturk came here to launch the hat reform, choosing the most conservative town he could find to do it in, and the building he spoke from is now a museum. And seventeen kilometres away at Kasaba stands a wooden mosque of 1366 that UNESCO inscribed in 2023 - close enough to be a morning and far enough to deserve its own row, which it has in this file. Almost no foreign visitor gets here, which is the whole recommendation.
Kastamonu Kalesi ve Eski Sehir, Kastamonu Merkez, Kastamonu, Kastamonu, Turkiye
The town is open at all hours and the castle is open ground reached by a steep road and steps. The museums, the Ismail Bey complex and the house museums keep daytime hours with a weekly closing day. The covered bazaar trades through the day. Winter is cold and snowy and some sites shorten their hours considerably.