Turkey – Black Sea West (Sinop, Kastamonu, Karabük). Oct 8, November 14-15, 2019
City of Safranbolu
From the 13th century to the advent of the railway in the early 20th century, Safranbolu was an important caravan station on the main East-West trade route between the Orient and Europe becoming very prosperous. As a result, during its apogee in the 17th century, it set a standard in public and domestic architecture that exercised a great influence on urban development over a large area of the Ottoman Empire.
The settlement developed as a trading centre after the Turkish conquest in the 11th century, and by the 13th century, it had become an important caravan station. The Old Mosque, Old Bath and Süleyman Pasha Medrese were built in 1322. With the emergence of railways in the 19th century, these towns abruptly lost their raison d’être, and most of them were adapted to other economic purposes. After the collapse of the caravan trade, Safranbolu’s proximity to the Karabük steel works gave it a new socio-economic role, although it preserved its original form and buildings to a remarkable extent. It was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1994.
The City of Safranbolu is a typical Ottoman city, with typical buildings and streets. Safranbolu consists of three distinct historic districts; the marketplace area of the inner city, known as Çukur, the area of Kıranköy, and Bağlar (the Vineyards). Çukur lies in the lower part of the town and has a triangular shape defined by two rivers. Its centre is the marketplace, surrounded by the houses and workshops of craftsmen. The segregation of the city centre is very typical for Anatolian cities. Kıranköy was formerly a non-Muslim district, with a socio-architectural pattern similar to that in contemporary European towns, with the artisans and tradesmen living above their shops. The houses in this district are built of stone, in contrast to the wooden houses in Çukur, which illustrates how the separation of Muslim and non-Muslim quarters during the Ottoman Period enabled each community to establish settlements according to their own traditions.
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The streets in Çukur and Kıranköy are narrow and curved, creating a wider view at the corners following topographic lines, and the various consoles of the houses contribute to creating interesting street perspectives. The streets feature stone paving, sloping inwards to evacuate surface water, and older houses are half-timbered, while the spaces between the timbers are filled with various building materials. There are no windows on the street frontage, so the stone walls resemble extensions of garden walls. The main rooms on the first floors are usually panelled with built-in cupboards, fireplaces, shelves and benches. Many of the ceilings are lavishly carved and painted. The rooms serve different purposes and are connected together with halls called “sofas”, which are very important elements of the house.
The pattern of settlement in Bağlar (the Vineyards) consists of single houses set within large gardens. This district on the northwest slope of the city, looking to the south, was the summer resort for the city.
I stopped here on my way to Ankara and then returned to this region after seeing Turkey – Central & West Anatolia.
It was a long 4½ hour drive from Hattusa in the Central and West Anatolia region of Turkey. All highways in Turkey are excellent and this was no exception. The last half was through the mountain range that borders the Black Sea.
Inceburun Lighthouse. On the NW corner of the Sinop Peninsula, the location is dramatic. The LH is about 18m high, the bottom two stories square and attached to a house and the top hexagonal. The lighthouse keeper appears to run a small farm with cows in the pasture. The coast is a sloping rock shelf backing onto windswept trees. Several people were fishing on the point. A trail around the cove to the west leads to the next headland.
But getting here was quite out of the way – 22 km one-way.
SINOP PENINSULA
In the NM “XL series”, this peninsula is at the far east end of the Black Sea West region.
Ethnography Museum Arslan Torun Mansion. The Arslan Torun Mansion sits on the main street of Sinop just east of the main square. The south side is timber framed with red brick and the rest is sided. The museum has the usual: archaeology and ethnography and lots on fishing.
Sinop Fortress Prison. The Sinop Fortress sits at the narrowest part of the peninsula, straddling the entire width. Nowadays, it is bisected by the main street of the city. The jail sits on the south side with two parts: the upper part has 3 cell blocks, each with about 32 cells and the lower part has one large U-shaped building with I guess about 80 cells.
