Safranbolu
UNESCO World Heritage Site (City Of Safranbolu, 1994); An Ottoman Caravan Route Town With Some Two Thousand Protected Buildings · Safranbolu, Karabuk
Safranbolu sat on the caravan road between the Black Sea ports and the interior, and its merchants built the houses that are now the reason to come - timber frames filled with mud brick, upper floors cantilevered out over the lanes, cupboards that turn out to be bathrooms, and painted wooden ceilings in the best rooms. Around two thousand of them are protected, and UNESCO inscribed the whole town in 1994 rather than any single building, which is the point: this is the best-preserved Ottoman townscape in the country. It has two halves, because the merchants had two houses - the Carsi quarter down in the valley for winter, around the bazaar and the caravanserai, and the Baglar vineyard quarter up on the hill for summer. Saffron still grows in the villages nearby and gives the town its name, and the local Turkish delight is a genuine speciality rather than a souvenir. Weekends are busy; a weekday in autumn is near-empty.
Carsi Mahallesi, Safranbolu, Karabuk, Safranbolu, Karabuk, Turkiye
An inhabited town, open at all hours and free to walk into. The house museums, the hamam, the caravanserai and the Crystal Terrace keep their own daytime hours and some close one day a week. Weekends are much busier than weekdays. Snow is normal between December and March and changes the town completely.