Three days in Bursa: where the Ottomans started, and where they are buried
Two nights under Mount Uludağ, with the great early mosques, the silk market, an Ottoman village on the mountain, and the kebab that was invented here.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Bursa
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
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Bursa was the Ottoman capital before Edirne and long before Istanbul, and it is where the dynasty is buried. Osman, who gave his name to the empire, died in 1323 while his people were still besieging the place; his son Orhan took it in 1326 and made it his seat, and for the next century every sultan who died was carried back here. That century is what you come to see, and it is compact enough to walk.
The rest of the city is a working one of more than two million people, mostly modern, largely industrial, built on textiles, canned fruit and cars. It is easy to be underwhelmed on the drive in. Then you turn into a courtyard off the main square and there is a mosque with twenty domes and a fountain running under the middle of them.
Two things are worth knowing before you book. The city is a short hop from Istanbul, most easily by fast ferry across the Marmara rather than by road around it, and it sits under a two and a half thousand metre mountain that is Turkey's main ski resort in winter and a cool green escape in summer.
Highlights
- Twenty domes and an indoor fountain at the Grand Mosque, with calligraphy panels the size of bedsheets on every pillar
- Blue and green tiles by masters from Tabriz, in Mehmed I's mosque and in the tomb across the road from it
- A ridge of royal tombs at Muradiye, where the losers of Ottoman succession fights are buried alongside the winners
- Cumalıkızık, an Ottoman village of painted houses on the mountainside, and breakfast in one of its courtyards
- İskender kebab in the shop where it was invented, which takes it very seriously indeed
Where to stay
Bursa, two nights
The old city runs along a shelf on the north slope of Mount Uludağ, with the plain spread out below it and the mountain rising steeply behind. The citadel ridge in the middle, once the Byzantine stronghold, is where the first two Ottoman sultans are buried; everything else grew east and west along the shelf.
That layout makes sightseeing simple. The Grand Mosque and the old market quarter are in the middle, the Green Mosque and its tilework are ten minutes east, the Muradiye tombs and the museums are fifteen minutes west, and Cumalıkızık is up the mountain to the southeast.
Bursa and Cumalıkızık went onto the UNESCO World Heritage list together in 2014, as the place where the Ottoman state took its urban shape. That is exactly the right way to look at the city: not as a collection of monuments, but as the first draft of everything that was later built in Istanbul.
Day by day
Day 1 in Bursa
The Grand Mosque, the silk market and the citadel ridge
Start in the middle. The Grand Mosque is the largest and oldest of the great Bursa mosques and it is nothing like the imperial mosques of Istanbul: no vast single dome, but a forest of pillars carrying twenty small ones, and a fountain playing indoors under the open oculus.
Behind it are the covered bazaar and the silk han of 1491, a two storey courtyard built around a small mosque where cocoons were once auctioned by the sack. There is still silk for sale and a great deal of tea being drunk under the plane tree in the middle.
Walk up to the citadel ridge for the end of the afternoon. The old walls and gates are still there, the first two Ottoman sultans lie in tombs in the park at the top, and the view runs out over the whole plain. Then come back down for dinner.
- 15:00
Grand Mosque
ReligiousFinished in 1399 for Bayezid I, and rebuilt more than once since, most thoroughly after the earthquake of 1855, always to the same plan: twenty domes on twelve pillars, with an ablution fountain in the middle of the prayer hall rather than outside it. The huge calligraphy panels hung between the pillars were painted by masters of the 19th century and are worth the crick in your neck.
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- 17:00
Tophane Clocktower
VisitThe clock tower stands at the top of the old citadel, on the ridge the Byzantines had fortified and the Ottomans finally took in 1326. The tombs of Osman and Orhan are in the park below it, rebuilt after the 1855 earthquake, and the terrace at the edge looks straight down over the bazaars and out across the plain.
- 19:00
İskender Tarihi Ahşap Dükkan
EatThe original İskender shop, a small wooden-fronted place in the centre run by the family that claims the invention in the 1860s. Order the single portion first; the butter and the bread make it heavier than it looks. They close in the evening, so this is a late lunch or an early supper rather than a dinner.
With more time: The old bridge over the Gökdere gorge, five minutes downhill from the mosque, is one of the few Ottoman bridges left with shops built along its deck, in the manner of the Ponte Vecchio. It has been rebuilt more than once and now holds craft workshops.
Day 2 in Bursa
The Green Mosque, Emir Sultan and the village on the mountain
The east side of town is the finest thing in Bursa. The Green Mosque and its tomb across the road were built in the 1420s by the sultan who put the empire back together after a civil war, and the tilework in them is the high point of early Ottoman decoration.
Ten minutes further east, in a hillside neighbourhood full of cemeteries, is a mosque of a very different character: a pilgrimage site, busy with families, with tea gardens under the trees and a courtyard that catches the afternoon light.
Then take a bus or taxi up to Cumalıkızık on the lower slopes of the mountain, and give the rest of the day to it. Go in the afternoon, when the coaches have left.
- 09:30
Green Mosque
ReligiousBuilt between 1419 and 1424 for Mehmed I, who had just ended a decade of brothers fighting each other for the throne. The green and blue tiles were cut by craftsmen brought from Tabriz, and they cover the mihrab, the sultan's private loge and, across the road, his own tomb, which is the more startling of the two buildings. Tea gardens beside it look out over the city.
- 12:00
Emir Sultan Mosque
ReligiousA working shrine rather than a museum, built around the tomb of a Bukharan holy man who married a daughter of Bayezid I and became the spiritual authority of the early Ottoman court. The present building is 19th century and lightly baroque, and the vast cemetery climbing the slope around it is one of the most atmospheric places in the city.
- 14:30
Cumalıkızık
LandmarkA village on the lower slopes of Uludağ that has been lived in continuously since the 14th century, with several hundred timber-framed houses in ochre, blue and pink along lanes cobbled with river stones. It is firmly on the day trip circuit now, with jam and pickle stalls and a row of breakfast places, but it is still a village and it empties in the late afternoon.
With more time: The cable car to Uludağ leaves from Teferrüç, on the eastern side of the city and not far from Cumalıkızık. It climbs to well over two thousand metres in about half an hour, to ski runs in winter and pine forest and cold air in summer, and it stops running in bad weather.
Day 3 in Bursa
The tombs at Muradiye and a villa in the park
Keep the last morning for the western side, where Murad II built his mosque in 1426 and then asked to be buried under a plain tomb with an opening left in the roof, so that the rain would fall on his grave.
Around it stands a garden of small domed mausoleums holding the rest of the family, including several princes who lost the fight for the throne and were strangled for it. The tilework inside a few of them is as good as anything at the Green Mosque and there is rarely anyone else there.
Five minutes downhill is a French-style villa given to Atatürk for his visits to the city, and then it is a short ride to the bus station or the ferry.
- 09:30
Muradiye Complex
OtherA mosque of 1426, plain by the standards of what the family built elsewhere, and a walled garden of royal tombs behind it, each one a small domed building with its own character and several of them tiled inside. The complex also holds a museum of Korans and calligraphy, which is closed on Mondays.
- 12:00
Atatürk House
HistoricA 19th century villa in the French manner, given to Atatürk in the 1920s for use whenever he was in Bursa and made into a museum in 1973. His own things are laid out on the first floor, and the point of it is less the objects than the picture of how the new republic wanted to live.
- 14:00
Ferry or bus back
TravelFor Istanbul, take the metro or a bus out to Mudanya or Güzelyalı for the fast ferry rather than going around by road. Buy the ferry ticket in advance in summer and at weekends.
With more time: If you are not leaving until the evening, the Kültürpark next door holds the city's archaeology collection, and the old wool mill on the far side of it has been turned into museums of textiles, of energy and of the migrations that have crossed Anatolia. The energy one keeps the original control room.
Before you go
Getting there
Bursa has no passenger railway, so it is a ferry or a bus. From Istanbul the fast ferries across the Marmara to Mudanya or Güzelyalı take about two hours from the European side, with a connecting bus or metro into the centre; going around by road takes longer and can be much longer in traffic.
From Sabiha Gökçen, the Asian airport, a yellow airport bus runs to the Bursa bus station roughly hourly and takes about ninety minutes. From Istanbul Airport on the European side you have to come into the city first.
Long distance buses connect to Ankara in about four hours and to Izmir and the Aegean in five or six. Bursa's own airport at Yenişehir is a long way out and has few flights.
Getting around
The Bursaray metro runs east to west and is useful between the centre and the museums in Kültürpark; three short tram lines cover the middle of town. Pay with a Bursakart bought from a station machine, or a single-use ticket from the same machine.
Dolmuş shared taxis here are ordinary white cars with a sign on the roof rather than minibuses, which surprises people. They are cheap and they go everywhere, but you need a few words of Turkish to use them.
The historic core, from the Grand Mosque east to the Green Mosque, is a walk of about twenty five minutes with a river gorge in the middle of it. Everything else is a short bus or metro ride.
Eating
İskender kebab was invented in Bursa in the 19th century: sliced döner laid over cubes of flat bread, tomato sauce poured over, a spoon of yoghurt on the side, and browned butter tipped over the lot at the table. Two shops in the centre claim the original recipe and both are worth the queue.
The other local things are kestane şekeri, candied chestnuts from the mountain, sold everywhere in boxes, and the peaches, which are the best in Turkey and appear in everything in late summer.
The old silk market and the covered bazaar around it are full of small kebab houses and tea gardens, and the courtyards are the pleasant places to sit.
Thermal baths
Çekirge, on the western edge of the city, has been a spa since the Romans, and several of the hot springs there still run into historic bath houses attached to hotels. A soak is a good use of an evening, particularly in winter.
The baths follow the usual Turkish pattern of separate men's and women's sections, or separate hours. Take a swimming costume if you would rather not go without.
Bursa is not a beautiful city and it does not pretend to be. What it has is the first century of an empire, still standing in green and blue tile within a twenty minute walk, and almost nobody looking at it.
Two nights, a mountain village, and more butter than is strictly advisable.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Bursa worth a trip from Istanbul?
- Yes, if early Ottoman architecture interests you at all. This is where the style was worked out, and the Green Mosque, the Grand Mosque and the Muradiye tombs are all first rank. It also works as a day trip on the fast ferry, but two nights lets you get up to Cumalıkızık and the mountain as well.
- How do you get there from Istanbul?
- The fast ferry across the Sea of Marmara to Mudanya or Güzelyalı, then a connecting bus or metro into the city, takes around two and a half hours door to door. Buses around the bay take longer and are at the mercy of Istanbul traffic. There is still no passenger train.
- Can you go up Uludağ?
- Yes, by cable car from the eastern side of the city or by road. In winter it is a ski resort with hotels at the top; from late spring it is walking country, cool air and picnics, and the cable car alone is worth the ride. Check the weather first, since it closes in high wind.
- Where should I eat İskender kebab?
- There are two long-standing claimants in the centre, both descended from the same 19th century family, and locals argue about them cheerfully. Either will give you the real thing: döner over bread, tomato sauce, yoghurt and hot butter poured at the table. Go at lunchtime, when both are open.
- Is two nights enough?
- For the monuments and Cumalıkızık, yes. Add a third night if you want to ski, spend a day on the mountain, or take the side trip to İznik, the old Nicaea, where the tiles in all these buildings were made and where the city walls and a lakeside church still stand.