Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [185]
EXPLORING BURSA
It is easy to find your way around Bursa, because wherever you are the mountain of Uludağ is visible behind the city. The key districts are some distance apart, built as they were on different ridges by successive sultans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But getting around is easy by cab or dolmuş, or by car using the small lanes above the city to avoid the traffic.
Around the Yeşil Mosque and Emir Sultan
The place for aesthetics: if time is short, spend it at the Yeşil Cami and Yeşil Türbe, the mosque and tomb of Mehmet I. From here you see why Bursa was known as Green Bursa: you get the most perfect view of the hilltop mosque of Emir Sultan, surrounded by cypresses, just a ten-minute stroll away. A sleepy museum in a box-hedged garden occupies the Yeşil medrese, alongside a row of prettily painted houses, now antique shops. Emir Sultan’s courtyard, with its wooden arches, has a nineteenth-century Caucasian feel. Birdhouses are built into all the walls; fine stones and cypresses fill the cemetery below. Itinerant sellers outside the mosques sell leather slippers and earthenware pots. Encourage them.
Not the place for a meal. Try tea with a pastry from Arzum, opposite the museum: buttery bread enriched with sesame oil (tahinli çörek), or poppy-seed pastries (haşhaş burma çöreği). Yeşil Timsahlar, at Namazgâh Caddesi 34, has walnut bread (cevizli lokum) and shortbread sculpted like pears, with cloves for stalks.
Around the Ulu Cami
The bustling heart of town, with the Ulu Cami (Great Mosque) and its herculean calligraphies, the bazaars brushing up against it, the Kent Müzesi (City Museum) for local arts and crafts, and loads of places to eat. Fire and quakes have taken their toll of the Covered Bazaar, but it is still choc-a-bloc with Bursa towels, loofahs, kese (massage gloves), clogs, bowls, and soaps. You can still buy silk at the most famous caravansary, Koza Han, and sip tea or lemonade (gazoz) under the plane trees. Stock up on local cheese and honey at Tahtakale, behind the Ulu Cami. Chewy Mihaliç (pronounced “mah-lich”) cheese is good at Polatgil Gıda (Veziri Caddesi 11).
For eighty years the Iskender Kebabcısı by the State Theater—all whitewash and gleaming sky-blue paint—has been home to the eponymous Iskender kebab, döner on pide, with tomato sauce, yogurt, and melted butter poured over.
Çiçek Izgara (by the town hall) is famous for another Bursa treat, Inegöl köfte—succulent veal-and-lamb patties, which you sprinkle with paprika and eat with piyaz, a bean and onion salad.
Ömür Köftecisi, up at the Ulu Cami’s west door, is a more lively Inegöl köfteci. Also does chops, good French fries, and sweet, milky kadayıf.
Namlı Ciğerci (behind Ömür in Ertaş Çarşısı), hidden among the towel shops, does meltingly delicious fried liver.
For slow cooking, visit Abidin Usta in Tuzpazarı, near Çiçek: stews (yahni), cabbage leaf wrapped around rice, raisins, and chestnuts (kestaneli lahana dolması), and, on Fridays, liver and rice wrapped in caul (ciğer sarması).
Lâlezar (Unlü Caddesi 14, near the Kent Müzesi) also offers local home-cooked delicacies: pit-roasted lamb (kuzu tandır), lamb in puff pastry (talaş kebabı), and aubergine purée (hünkar beğendi).
Bağdat Hurmacısı pastries ooze syrup Kafkas is king of marron glacé (kestane şekeri).
The Muradiye
Escape the concrete in a beautiful, shady garden with loads of history. Take a book on a fine spring day. The Muradiye Camii, with its fine brickwork portico, is the last of the great early Bursa mosques. The gardens’ imperial mausoleums open during museum hours. Across the square, in the Şair Ahmetpaşa Medrese, is the Esat Uluumay Museum, with its costume and jewelry collection.
Tophane
This is the old citadel area. The walled city itself is built up and the walls are being (over-) restored, but get a map and take a stroll. Serious anoraks hunt here for interesting early mosques amid the