|
"
Time in
Safranbolu
 A largely preserved
town with elegant mansions out of an old dream await visitors
to Safranbolu.
As the mansion in which I am a guest creaks off to sleep, I
lie stretched out on a floor mattress redolent of soap in the
master bedroom, examining the wheel of fortune design on the
ceiling. The silver studs in the geometric decoration on the
ceiling of my room, which is reminiscent of an ornate wooden
jewelry box, glitter like stars in the moonlight beaming in
through the window. I tumble into one of my deepest sleeps
ever in the sweet sandalwood-like scent. I am staying at the
only bed & breakfast in the Safranbolu village of Yörük Köyü.
For someone like myself who grew up in the soulless apartments
of the big cities, or, as architect Vedat Dalokay calls them,
the ‘human silos’, sleeping in an over 200-year-old wood frame
house is the ultimate in luxury!
 WO CHILDREN TO EVERY FAMILY
The population of Safranbolu hovered around 5 thousand up to
the 1960s, the result, according to the former mayor, Kızıltan
Ulukavak, who was instrumental in having the city declared
an historical site in the 1970s, to Safranbolu families for
centuries having always had two children and to the city’s
closed economic structure based on the guild system.
Consequently little need was felt for new houses and, as the
stately mansions of Edirne, Bursa and Istanbul were becoming
heaps of rubble, Safranbolu’s lovely wooden houses managed
to remain standing until recent times. With a few
modifications of course. These houses, which were designed
according to the patriarchal family structure, have been
partitioned off by their new owners to accommodate several
families at a time.
 The tiny windows that are one of the
distinguishing features of Safranbolu architecture were
enlarged and converted into ‘modern’ windows. Naturally,
their black, eyelid-like shutters also disappeared along
with the tiny windows, and the snow-white lace curtains were
replaced by tulle
Until the site came under protection by law and people
were prohibited from making modifications at will, the
houses were continuously changing shape like Lego toys. But none of this alters the fact that, architecturally
speaking, Safranbolu is the best preserved town in
Anatolia. A rare blessing for those who would like to
picture how an Ottoman town looked 200 years ago,
Safranbolu, with its little-changed cobbled pavements and
authentic marketplace is a virtual open-air museum
RISING LIKE SCREW SHELLS
The sloping terrain at Safranbolu, which is situated in a
deep canyon carved out by
 three rivers, produced
interesting architectural solutions. The stone-built
ground floors of Safranbolu houses, most of which are two-
or three-storey mansions, generally follow the natural
gradient of the street. The upper storeys meanwhile,
supported by buttresses, may project over the street.
Although the houses are built on small, oddly shaped lots,
thanks to this
building technique the
upper level rooms are nevertheless rectangular and
spacious. Another aspect of the technique is that the
house’s axis can be rotated slightly on the upper storeys
according to need or exposure to the sun! The houses along
the narrow streets of the marketplace thus rise twisting and
turning like screw shells over the narrow and sloping plots
of land to which they cling.
The interiors of the houses are as elegant as their
exteriors. The low-ceilinged middle storeys used in winter
are cosy and warm like a womb while the upper floors, used
in summer, are airy with high ceilings. The master bedroom,
the most beautiful room
with the best view, is usually
situated on the topmost floor. This room, decorated with
 woodwork and stencilling, is where the master craftsmen
exhibited all their skill.
In typical Safranbolu houses,
each room was furnished in such a way as to meet all
the
needs of the nuclear family. It is not for nothing that
Safranbolu residents called
each one of these rooms a
‘house’ since they could be a sitting room in the daytime
thanks to divans running around the twall, simultaneously a kitchen thanks to the
hearth, a
bedroom thanks to the floor mattresses taken out of the
cupboard at night,
and a bathroom thanks to the washstand
concealed in the cupboard! Because they
were designed as
independent units, each of the rooms was assigned a name
such
as ‘storage house’, ‘guest house’ or ‘dining house’.
HISTORIC MANSION WITH A POOL
During the years when Safranbolu was becoming a popular
destination for tourists, there was a constant stream of
 visitors to the traditional houses. The house owners, who at
first welcomed the tourists hospitably, naturally tired of
this human traffic with time. But just at that point the
museum houses came to the rescue. The first of them, and
perhaps the most beautiful, is the Kaymakamlar Evi, a house
that was opened to visitors in 1981 following a restoration
by the Ministry of Culture. Although it leaves a slightly
‘mummified’ impression since no one actually lives in it,
this mansion is nevertheless one of the most flawless
examples of the Safranbolu house. Meanwhile the Turing
Havuzlu Konak, or Mansion with Pool operated by the Touring Club of Turkey,
which began serving guests in 1989, is the
first historic
mansion in Turkey to have been converted into a hotel. The nicest surprise of this mansion, which greets visitors at
the entrance to the town and was once owned by one of its
wealthiest families, the Asmazlar, is the approximately 1.8
meter-deep pool that holds several tons of water in the
living room—restored and used as a café today. I sit and
chat with with owner Şerife Asmaz in this room on the first
 floor of the house. Şerife Hanım recalls the words of her
mother-in-law Gültekin Hanım, once one of Safranbolu’s most
beloved characters: “Breath keeps these houses alive, my
girl.” As the light seeping through the flowered curtains
that have graced the windows for who knows how many
generations casts our silhouettes on the pool’s mirror, I can’t help but wonder for how many more generations the
house will continue to breathe in this way
SUMMER AT SAFRANBOLU
Did you know that in the old days every Safranbolu family
from the wealthiest to the poorest had one town house and
one summer house in the vineyards? The Bağlar or ‘Vineyards’
region, which most tourists who visit Safranbolu today have
never even heard of, is 3 km from the city center. A central
feature of the historical mansions at Bağlar, which in summer
is a few degrees cooler than the marketplace area, is that
they are large and regular in shape. As soon as autumn comes
to Bağlar, a pastoral refuge with its fruit orchards and pure
air, each house begins to hum like a tiny factory as winter
provisions such as molasses, jam, pickles and ‘dried minced
meat’ are produced. Baked in a community effort today, the
thin ‘yufka’ breads are draped over wooden beams and hung from
the ceiling to cool, and the sauteed minced meat (known
locally as ‘dried minced meat’), made from the animals
slaughtered every autumn, is now only a nod to nostalgia by a
handful of families. Passing through the viewer of my camera
on the bicycle he rides with his brother, Erhan approaches me
with curiosity and asks, “Why do you show just the pretty
houses in front? Why don’t you also tell about the
ones that
have disappeared?” Erhan has examined two houses on the verge of collapse in his school
homework assignment entitled, ‘Safranbolu’s Other Face’. I
understand immediately what he means when he points out a
ruined house that gazes with vacant eyes from behind a
gleaming restored mansion on the avenue. Erhan helps me to
realize that what the houses of Safranbolu really need is not
to be turned into a series of superficial facades like a film
set for a western, and how very difficult it is to live in a
museum.
Long live Safranbolu..
Bron:
THY
|
