Highlights of Bursa, Bursa, Turkey

Before the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and made the newly renamed Istanbul their capital, the seat of the Ottoman Empire for over a century was in Bursa, where a succession of sultans developed the city around several commercial and religious focal points.

Here is the perspective from my hotel window in Bursa, dominated by the Grand Mosque which anchors the most central of the inscribed areas in the city known as Orhan Ghazi Külliye (the word “külliye” translates as a “social complex” and usually denotes a neighborhood centered on a place of worship).

The interior of the Grand Mosque is among the most variedly decorated of all that I have seen and quite unusually places the shadirvan for ritual ablutions inside the mosque proper.

This central neighborhood is also home to khans, the commercial quarters that essentially retained their purpose to our days.

A little distance away on a high hill in Tophane Park stands the mausoleum of Orhan Gazi, the first Ottoman sultan.

Mausoleums are a big part of Bursa’s heritage, but this particular one is especially popular with visitors, vast majority of whom seemed to be women at the time that I stepped in. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).