Tophane Clock Tower and the Tombs of Osman and Orhan Gazi

About this place

On this hilltop lies the man the whole Ottoman state is named after, and the son who took Bursa and made it the first capital. Osman Gazi, so the tradition goes, had asked to be buried beneath the 'silver dome' he could see from his siege lines; when the city fell in 1326, Orhan carried his body up to a Byzantine chapel on the citadel. That chapel served as the family vault for more than five centuries until the 1855 earthquake wrecked it, and in 1863 Sultan Abdülaziz built the two tombs that stand on its footprint today. Do not expect an Istanbul-scale mausoleum: Osman's tomb is a single domed chamber with his cenotaph behind a brass screen, ringed by sixteen smaller ones for sons, wives and kin whose names are no longer known; Orhan's is larger, its dome carried on four columns, with twenty cenotaphs including his wife Nilüfer Hatun and patches of the old church's floor mosaic still showing. Both are free, shoes come off at the door, women cover their hair, and the doors are open in daylight, roughly 08:30 to 17:30. Ninety metres away stands the white clock tower that ended up on every Bursa postcard. It went up between August 1904 and August 1905 on the site of an earlier tower from Abdülaziz's reign, to mark the twenty-ninth year of Abdülhamid II on the throne. It rises 33 metres over six storeys, carries four 90-centimetre clock faces at the top, and hides an 89-step wooden staircase inside. The nice detail is that it never retired: the municipality still uses it as a fire lookout, which is why visitors are not allowed up. The interior is not the point here; take your photograph from below and move on. The real point is the terrace. Tophane park is open around the clock with no ticket, and its northern edge is a long balustrade with all of Bursa laid out beyond it: minarets and domes, then the green plain running to the horizon, with Uludağ at your back. The tea gardens under the trees are the correct way to spend half an hour here, ideally just before sunset when the air cools and the plain changes colour. In August the hill catches a breeze the city centre never gets; in winter you may find Uludağ white with snow and the city below sharp and clear. Getting here: from the Grand Mosque walk west and climb the Saltanat gate steps, about ten minutes uphill. It is the prettiest approach but no good for pushchairs or anyone who tires on stairs; they should take a taxi or a bus straight to Tophane. The park itself is flat and easy for families. The restored castle walls and the Zindankapı gate are on the same hill, and the whole thing pairs naturally with the Grand Mosque and the bazaar hans below. An hour is enough, an hour and a half if you sit for tea.