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Eskisehir is a city in northwestern Turkey on the banks of the Porsuk River, famous for its Ottoman quarter of Odunpazari, its many museums and its riverside. Its top sights are the Odunpazari Houses, Kursunlu Mosque, Odunpazari Modern Museum, the Meerschaum and Glass Art museums, Sazova Park and the Porsuk River.
Founded by the Phrygians around 1000 BC near ancient Dorylaeum, it saw a battle of the First Crusade in 1097 and was largely rebuilt after the Turkish War of Independence. A university town, it gained a tram in 2004 and Turkey's first high-speed train service, to Ankara, in 2009.
The urban population is about 821,000. Eskisehir is known for meerschaum, mined in Turkey only here, and for met helvasi, nougat halva, poppy-seed buns and ciborek pastries. It lies 233 km west of Ankara and 330 km south-east of Istanbul, and is served by Hasan Polatkan Airport.
The Odunpazari Houses are the Ottoman-era homes of Odunpazari, the hilltop quarter where Eskisehir, Turkey, was first settled. Built in joined rows along winding lanes and dead ends, they have wooden ornament and bay windows, and in the taller houses family life went on upstairs.
Kursunlu Mosque and Complex is an Ottoman mosque and social complex in the Odunpazari district of Eskisehir, Turkey, built between 1517 and 1525 for the vizier Coban Mustafa Pasha. Named for its lead-covered dome, it is thought to be by Acem Ali, and it had a Mevlevi lodge and two caravanserais.
The Museum of Independence in Odunpazari, Eskisehir, Turkey, tells the story of the Turkish War of Independence from 1919 to 1923. Opened on 29 October 2016 in the restored Mestanoglu Halil Mansion, where Ismet Inonu stayed in 1921, it uses touchscreens, cartoons and wax figures.
Odunpazari Modern Museum, or OMM, is a museum of modern art among the historic houses of Odunpazari in Eskisehir, Turkey, opened on 7 September 2019. Kengo Kuma designed it with pine timber as a modern take on Japanese and Ottoman building, for the collection of Eskisehir-born Erol Tabanca.
The Meerschaum Museum in Eskisehir, Turkey, set inside the Kursunlu Complex in Odunpazari, shows pipes and other pieces carved from meerschaum, a soft white mineral mined in the region. Opened in 2008 as the only museum of its kind, it holds about 400 pieces made by 60 artisans.
The Museum of Modern Glass Art in Odunpazari, Eskisehir, Turkey, opened on 1 December 2007 as the country's first museum of glass art. Made from three restored Odunpazari houses, it shows 125 works by Turkish and foreign artists, in techniques from hot glassblowing to cold shaping.
The Yilmaz Buyukersen Wax Museum on Ataturk Boulevard in Eskisehir, Turkey, opened on 19 May 2013 as Turkey's first wax museum. Its figures were made by Yilmaz Buyukersen, sculptor and mayor of the city, and show Ataturk, Ottoman sultans, poets, actors and other famous figures.
The Eti Archaeology Museum on Ataturk Boulevard in Eskisehir, Turkey, holds finds from the Neolithic, Hittite, Phrygian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Set up in 1974 and reopened in a larger building in 2011, it shows sculptures, steles and Roman floor mosaics from nearby Dorylaeum.
The Porsuk River flows through the centre of Eskisehir, Turkey, and at 448 km is the longest tributary of the Sakarya River. Long polluted by sewage and industry, it was cleaned up under mayor Yilmaz Buyukersen in the 2000s, and gondolas and tour boats now run on it in the city centre.
Adalar, the Islands, is the riverside quarter on the Porsuk River in central Eskisehir, Turkey, between the Ataturk Avenue and Koprubasi bridges. Once home to open-air cinemas, then music halls and funfairs, it filled with cafes from the late 1980s, and gondolas and tour boats now pass it.
Sazova Park, the Sazova Science, Culture and Art Park, is a park of 400,000 square metres in Eskisehir, Turkey, opened in 2008 on former farmland. Its sights include a fairy-tale castle, a pirate ship on a 25,000-square-metre lake, a zoo, a science centre and a steam miniature railway.
Kent Park is a park of about 270,000 square metres along the Porsuk River in Eskisehir, Turkey, between the bus station and Gokmeydan. Set around a 20,000-square-metre pond with an island, it has rose gardens, cafes, sports grounds and an artificial beach on a branch of the river.
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