Yukarı Taşhan (Upper Stone Inn)

About this place

Bolu lost most of its Ottoman past to fires and earthquakes, which is why this two-storey inn of cut stone, standing since 1804 (AH 1219) beside the Yıldırım Bayezid (Great) Mosque in the middle of the bazaar, reads like the last witness of the old town. It was built by Serbevvab Hacı Abdullah Ağa, and above the vaulted gateway a carved Ottoman-Turkish foundation inscription still praises him and lists the ablution fountain, the street fountains and the water channels he gave the market. Left of the entrance is a tiny tomb known as Eskici Baba, where locals pause more often than visitors do. The architecture is plain and well judged: a barrel-vaulted entrance passage opens onto an unroofed courtyard with chamfered corners, ringed by round-arched arcades on thick square piers, with small vaulted cells behind them that once held merchants and their goods. Today the courtyard lives on booksellers, small shops and tea tables, so you walk in without a ticket or official hours, and it is quieter on Sunday when many of the shops close. Be honest with yourself: this is not a place you drive across a province for, but a fifteen-to-thirty-minute stop if you are already in Bolu. Together with the Great Mosque, the older Aşağı Taşhan (1750) on the west side of the mosque and the covered market streets, it packs almost everything of the town's visible history into a few hundred metres. The courtyard is level and pushchair-friendly; the upper floor is a short stone stair. The natural moment to see it is a break on the Istanbul-Ankara drive, or on the way back from Lake Abant and Gölcük before leaving town. In winter the snow that blankets Bolu settles on the arcades too, and a glass of tea under the arches becomes a perfectly good reason to stop.