Ottoman House Museum

The Ottoman House Museum stands on Aralık Street in the Muradiye quarter of Bursa, near the complex of Sultan Murad II. It is a three-level house: a basement, a ground floor and a first floor. The state bought it in 1946, restored it, and opened it as a museum in 1958. It was repaired again and re-arranged in 1973 and 1992.

From outside, the house shows the mix of materials that marks traditional Bursa architecture: a stone base, plaster, and a slightly projecting first floor where zigzag brickwork is set between timber beams. Small loophole-style windows light the basement, and arched windows with plaster tracery crown the upper rooms. On the west side, a courtyard and a wooden balcony lead to the entrances.

The best is upstairs. A sofa, an iwan and two symmetrical rooms open on to each other and hold some of the finest 17th-century wooden decoration in the city. The sofa ceiling has zigzag patterns in cream, green and red, the iwan ceiling has a central star with hexagons around it, and a hand-painted border of rumi, palmette and curled branches runs around the walls.