Yörük Köyü

Yörük Köyü was settled by Yörük families moved here in the Ottoman period, and it prospered - the men worked as tanners and traders, and the money went into houses of the same type that made Safranbolu famous: timber frames filled with mud brick, whitewashed, with jettied upper floors, carved ceilings and built-in cupboards concealing washrooms. Around a hundred survive, on lanes around a village square with a mosque, an old laundry building where women washed communally, and a covered fountain. The Sipahioğlu Konağı is open as a museum with its rooms furnished and its wooden ceilings intact, and a couple of others take guests. The difference from Safranbolu is entirely one of scale: no coach parties, no rows of souvenir shops, and on a weekday you may have the lanes to yourself. It falls within the wider Safranbolu UNESCO context and is twelve kilometres away, which makes it the obvious half-day from there.

What you actually see

• The mansions - around a hundred Ottoman houses on the lanes.
• The Sipahioğlu house - the furnished museum interior.
• The communal laundry - the old washing house on the square.
• The empty streets - the quiet Safranbolu lacks.

When to go

April to June and September to November. Weekdays for genuine quiet; autumn colour in the surrounding hills is good.

Honest expectations

Most houses are private and seen from the street. Facilities are one or two cafés and a guesthouse. The museum house keeps limited hours. There is little to do beyond walking and looking.

Nearby

Safranbolu is 12 km away; Tokatlı canyon and Bulak cave are in the same district.