Bursa
— — the green city, the first Ottoman capital.
Not only on a wall.
“A city laid along the lower slopes of Uludağ, the mountain that closes the southern sky. This is where the Ottoman state began in 1326, and the buildings the early sultans left behind are still the centre of the old town: a green-tiled tomb, a fifteenth-century mosque named for the same colour, and a grand bedesten the size of a village. Up the cable car the mountain holds snow most of the year. Down in the lower streets, the air smells of the chestnut sweet the city is known for, slowly cooked in syrup.
Bursa, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Bursa sits on the lower northern slopes of Mount Uludağ, about ninety kilometres south of Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara. The city was taken by Orhan in 1326 and served as the first capital of the Ottoman state until the seat moved to Edirne around 1365. The historic core, together with the early village of Cumalıkızık above the city, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2014 as Bursa and Cumalıkızık: the Birth of the Ottoman Empire. The metropolitan population is around three million, which makes Bursa the fourth-largest city in Turkey.
The two buildings that hold the old town are the Ulu Cami, completed in 1399 under Bayezid I, and the Yeşil Külliyesi just east of it, finished in the 1420s under Mehmed I. The Ulu Cami has twenty domes carried on twelve piers and a fountain at the centre of the prayer hall, an unusual plan for an Ottoman mosque. The Yeşil complex is the building the city is named after, for the deep cuerda-seca tiles inside the tomb. Both stand inside walking distance of the Koza Han silk bazaar, which has traded since 1491.
The mountain over the city is Uludağ, 2,543 metres at its summit. The Bursa Teleferik runs from the eastern edge of town up to the Sarıalan plateau at about 1,635 metres in roughly twenty minutes, then on to Oteller at 1,800. The upper station carries snow from late November through March and is the main ski area within reach of Istanbul. Down at city level the climate is humid Mediterranean and the lower streets are warm into October. The cool air off the mountain is what the city used historically for its silk reeling.