Safranbolu is a city where the most beautiful examples of Turkish-Islamic art have survived to the present day. This historical city, where traditional Turkish houses, which are mixed with the Islamic way of life, and examples of civil architecture from the 18th and 19th centuries, were included in the ‘World Heritage List’ by UNESCO in 1994.
The city of Safranbolu consists of three separate settlements named Çarşı, Bağlar and Kıranköy. Çarşı, located in the sheltered valley part of the city, is the area where the winter houses and all the commercial enterprises of the time were located. Bağlar, built on the higher parts of the city with houses in large gardens, was used as a place of pasture, countryside and recreation during the summer months. Bağlar is also known as the place where food was prepared from the vegetables grown in the fields and orchards to be consumed in the houses of Çarşı in winter. All three regions are geographically distinct from each other. Kıranköy, which complements these two settlements, was inhabited mostly by Greek Orthodox residents until the proclamation of the Republic.
Companionship of Stone, Iron and Wood
Safranbolu is a city founded as if an architectural design without a drawing was followed by an unwritten constitution. The houses, built in the harmony of stone, iron and wood, have created an architectural masterpiece by integrating with cobblestone sidewalks and alaturka tiled roofs.
Safranbolu houses are mostly built on the garden wall following the street. Almost all houses were built with two or three floors. On the ground floor of the houses, a large double-winged door is opened and a space called ‘life’ is entered. The middle floor, where the kitchen is located, is also the daily work area. On the upper floors, there are rooms entered through doors that cut the corners of the octagonal-shaped sofas with beveled corners, which are the common use area of the houses.
A panoramic view of the city reveals that every building in perfect harmony with each other forms a part of the whole, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Mosques and other monumental buildings follow this rule. Likewise, no house blocked the light of the other house or even blocked the road.
In fact, what makes the city Safranbolu is its topography. This smart city built in the valley was shaped according to the requirements of human needs. Reflecting the 18th and 19th century architectural period, this city, which is still standing today, is the result of the blending of centuries of knowledge, hard work and rationality.
Safranbolu is Not a Heritage City; It is Heritage Itself
In Safranbolu’s Gümüş neighborhood, an illuminated sign on a high stone wall reads ‘World Heritage City’ in English and Turkish, along with the UNESCO emblem. However, Safranbolu is not a heritage city; it is heritage itself.
The houses of Safranbolu, all facing in the same direction without perspective, as if they were painted in a miniature, are like actors greeting the audience after a theater play without stepping in front of each other, actors in a play that never ends and will continue as long as the world lasts.
Safranbolu is the city where the winter suits the most
When it snows in the city, these houses look like sugar houses sprinkled with powdered sugar by a chef’s hand; they wish Hansel and Gretel would turn a corner and find their own house. The streets of Çarşı, shrouded in winter silence, are laced with the hoofbeats of Janissaries on campaign two hundred years ago and the horses of merchants bringing spices from the East. As soon as you hear these sounds, your body will travel to the past with your mind, and a glass of salep in the ‘life’ section of the first mansion you will enter will warm your heart with the comfort of the present. Because there are no ‘hotels’ in Safranbolu, there are ‘mansions’ and in those mansions there are friendly and experienced teams who will make everyone feel at home.
Time for Almond Blossoms in Safranbolu
With March, almond trees are embroidered with lace and needlepoint in Safranbolu. When spring comes, Safranbolu becomes a bride, accompanied by a wedding with its drums, zurna and köçek (dancer boy), and the almond blossoms become her lace veil. There are trees interspersed between houses in Çarşı and houses interspersed between trees in Bağlar. The water that walks on the branches of these trees makes the tiny buds green. This is the green of the wilsh in the phrase ‘They have reached their destiny, let’s go up to the top of the kerevet (wooden bedstead).’ This is the wish of the people who lived in their houses in Çarşı in winter a hundred years ago, to return to their gardens and orchards in the high altitude Bağlar District with the arrival of spring.
The beds, quilts, pots and pans, cats, dogs and chickens from the house are loaded onto mules and set off on the stony-gravelly, bumpy-uneven path from Çarşı to Bağlar. Time, too, flows by leaving its mark on the stony-gravelly, bumpy-uneven bed of life. Sometimes it passes through a place like the İncekaya Aqueduct, saving the city from thirst; sometimes it flows in the Akçasu Stream that passes under the Izzet Mehmet Pasha Mosque. Like the people of the neighborhood who walk slowly to this unique mosque for Isha prayers, the trees walk towards summer without looking back.
A Long-Lasting Transition from Spring to Summer in All Shades of Green
Safranbolu’s ever-fresh and green days, as in the line ‘My life is experiencing its second spring’, start in mid-April and last until September. This is how the city is ready to welcome those who prefer to travel in hot weather: always smiling and inviting. The naturally air-conditioned Bağlar section of the city dresses your cardigans, and those who want to cool off in Çarşı can satisfy their craving for ice-cold temperatures with homemade lemonade. If the jingle of anklets on the ankles of the rakkas, who have been dancing to the sounds of the lute and kanun for a hundred and fifty years behind the linoleum on the windows of the houses on summer nights, does not caress your ears, then you are unaware of the love stories that have and have not happened in this city. Because Safranbolu, with its Muslim community in Çarşı and its Greek people in Kıranköy, bears traces from the times when it was the ‘tip’ principality of the multicultural Ottoman Empire in the east.
Autumn is Art in Safranbolu, Season in Other Cities
What the poet said: “Autumn is art, the others are seasons.” Minds that in other cities need a calendar to recognize the seasons, in Safranbolu they understand the changing of the seasons by the colors. Fall means yellow, red, orange; it means the sadness of yellow, orange and red. Fall means longing with the end of summer loves. But love for Safranbolu does not last only a season. Those who fall in love with the city in the summer do not leave it in the fall. The summer traveler who leaves the city will promise, “I will come back to you again!’ The first time he puts his backpack on his back, he will return to keep his promise to the city. Rather than carrying a rose in his heart that withers before it blooms, he will come back to see that rose bloom in the fall.
Safranbolu is not a fairy tale city; Safranbolu is the fairy tale itself
Safranbolu does not pour water after travelers with a mashrap so that they will come back. He knows that those who breathe the air of this city once will come back again and again. In Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, Marco Polo says: “My lord, I have told you about all the cities I know.” Kubilay Khan replies: “There is one city you have never mentioned.” Safranbolu is that city.
It is such a city that it invites one to become the hero of a fairy tale that takes place in the present, in the land of barber fleas, messenger camels, birds that turn into sultans and princes that turn into frogs. But no one knows that this tale is the tale of the thousand and second night in Safranbolu. Because Safranbolu is not a fairy tale city; Safranbolu is the fairy tale itself…
Text: Tuğba Turan, Photos: İsmail Şahinbaş
– Tuğba Turan, Pharmacist, Author
WORLD HERITAGE MAGAZINE ISSUE 1 (APRIL 2023)