Odunpazarı

Odunpazarı - firewood market - is where Eskişehir began, and its streets of Ottoman houses survived the city's twentieth-century rebuilding. The houses are timber-framed with jettied upper floors and shuttered windows, and the municipality's restoration painted them in strong colours - ochre, teal, pink, deep red - which is not strictly historical and has given the quarter its look and its nickname. Inside are house museums, the meerschaum museum covering the local stone-carving craft, museums of modern glass art and of typewriters, craft shops, cafés and the Kurşunlu complex, a sixteenth-century mosque and caravanserai. The other reason to come is recent: the Odunpazarı Modern Museum, opened in 2019 to a design by Kengo Kuma, is a stack of interlocking timber boxes housing a substantial Turkish contemporary art collection, and the contrast between it and the old houses around it is deliberate and works. The quarter is on Turkey's UNESCO tentative list.

What you'll find

• The painted houses - restored timber konaks in strong colours.
• The OMM - Kengo Kuma's timber-stacked modern art museum.
• The meerschaum museum - the local pipe-carving craft.
• The Kurşunlu complex - the sixteenth-century mosque and han.

When to go

April to June and September to November. Weekday afternoons for quiet; the quarter fills with students and families at weekends.

Before you go

The paint scheme is a modern choice, not restoration to original colours. The quarter is small and commercial in parts. The OMM closes on Mondays and charges separately.

Nearby

Eskişehir's Porsuk river and its canal boats are in the centre; Sazova Park is on the city's edge.

Key facts