Population: 62,000
Market day: Tuesday
The only formal attraction in the small town of Bozüyük is the pleasant Kasımpaşa Cami, built between 1525 and 1528 and part of a complex whose old bedesten still survives right beside it (battered brick domes across the road probably mark the old hamam). A well-kept garden runs down to the triple portico in front of the mosque with the windows on either side topped with yellow and green tiles reminiscent of the ones that used to adorn the Haseki Hürrem Cami in İstanbul’s Cerrahpaşa. Inside, the mosque is a single room beneath a soaring, newly painted dome. Many of the original wooden window shutters survive, albeit with much of the inlay lost. There are also some fine marble details, especially in a small pillared structure in one corner than reminded me of a Byzantine structure. Near the door a mahfil box is also tiled and accessed via steep marble stairs.
A few streets back from the mosque is the old railway line with a few crumbling early 20th-century houses facing it. Most are almost beyond recovery although an urban regeneration project was slated for 2014.
Sleeping
Çalı Hotel. Right in the town centre. Tel: 0228-313 0300
Grand Çalı Hotel. Greater luxury but on the far side of the railway line. Tel: 0228-314 8932
Transport info
There are half-hourly minibuses from Bilecik and Eskişehir to Bozüyük, and onward transport to İnönü, İnegöl and Kütahya.
The new high-speed train service does not pass through the centre of Bozüyük although local bus No 6 runs to the newly-built station outside town.
Byzantine capital reused in mosque
