Things to Do in Erzurum: The Twin Minarets, Palandoken and Cag Kebabi

--- title: "Erzurum travel guide: Seljuk stone, a real winter and a ski mountain at the city's edge" description: "An honest guide to Erzurum: the Cifte Minareli Medrese and the Seljuk core, the castle and museums, the 1919 Congress building, Palandoken, the Tortum and Narman day trips, when to go, cag kebabi and kadayif dolmasi." city: "Erzurum" lang: "en" ---

Erzurum: a Seljuk city at 1,900 m that is also a ski town

Start with the altitude, because everything else follows from it. Erzurum sits at roughly 1,900 m on a high plateau. That is a different order of elevation from most Turkish cities, and it decides the air, the buildings, the food and the way people here talk about winter. Erzurum has one of the coldest climates of any city in Turkey, with long winters spent well below freezing. This is not a footnote to the city. It is the city.

Walk into the centre and what you see is stone. The Cifte Minareli Medrese is a 13th-century Seljuk building and the emblem of the place. The Ulu Camii shares its square, the Yakutiye Medresesi is a few hundred metres west, and the Uc Kumbetler sit a short way south. All of it is walkable, all of it is the same material, and all of it was built with the same seriousness. If you want to see Turkey's 13th-century stonework, there are very few centres where it is concentrated like this. Then you look south from the same streets and Palandoken is there: one of Turkey's main ski mountains, with runs that start almost at the city. Having both of these in one place is the strange and good thing about Erzurum.

Who is it for? Skiers, obviously. Beyond that, people who like reading history through stone, who do not mind being away from crowds, and who are not bothered by cold. Erzurum is not an easy holiday city. It has not softened itself to receive you. The two common mistakes both come from that. The first is underestimating the cold: minus 20 C is not unusual here, it is ordinary, and someone who arrives dressed for an Istanbul winter goes back to the hotel before finishing the centre. The second is arriving in summer and finding a ski resort with nothing running. In summer Palandoken is just a mountain. The facilities are shut, the lifts are still, the view is fine but the thing you came for is not there. Deciding what you actually want and choosing the season around it matters more here than anywhere.

Quick answer

Erzurum works as a three-day city: one day for the Seljuk core on foot, one for Palandoken, one for the Tortum direction.

• Route: the medrese and mosque core in the centre, then the castle and museums, then Palandoken, then the day trips.
• December to March for skiing. June to September for the stone and the museums.
• Prepare for the cold properly. Minus 20 C is not an unusual day here.
• A car is required for Tortum, Narman and the monasteries. Public transport will not cover those directions.

1. Cifte Minareli Medrese

This is the building people picture when they hear Erzurum. A 13th-century Seljuk medrese and the city's emblem, named for the two brick minarets rising either side of its front. Stand across from it before you go in, because the argument is in the portal: stone cut, pierced, layered and worked, and the people who did it had no power tools.

Inside is an open courtyard on two levels, ringed by arcades. At the far end sits a large domed tomb, the heaviest piece in the complex. Across the whole building you notice a decision: the ornament is gathered at the portal and the tomb, and everything between them is plain. Seljuk stonework piles its display onto chosen points and leaves the surfaces around them empty, and the emptiness is what carries the display.

In winter the courtyard fills with snow and the building reads differently: white ground, grey stone, sky. In summer the carving is easier to follow because shadow picks it out. Opening days and entry conditions can change, so verify officially before you go.

2. Erzurum Ulu Camii

The mosque immediately west of the Cifte Minareli, sharing the same square. It belongs to the Saltuk period and is older than its famous neighbour. From outside it makes no case for itself: low, wide, almost closed. Which is why most visitors take their photograph in front of the medrese and walk straight past it.

Go in. The prayer hall is divided by rows of stone columns into something long and low. The light is dim, the ceiling is timber, and the columns close off the perspective in every direction. The feeling is the exact reverse of the medrese: there, everything works towards the front and the display. Here, everything works inward and towards quiet. A hundred metres apart, two different minds.

That contrast is the best thing about walking the Erzurum centre. The buildings sit so close together that the comparison makes itself. Give the Ulu Camii fifteen minutes, but do not just look through the door. Walk to the middle, stop, and look along the columns. It is an active mosque, so plan around prayer times.

3. Yakutiye Medresesi

An Ilkhanid medrese in the centre, on Cumhuriyet Caddesi. Today it holds the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts and Ethnography, so you get the building and a collection in one visit. Its surviving minaret is banded with turquoise tiles and is recognisable from a distance.

The portal is again where the work is, but it speaks a different dialect from the Cifte Minareli: more geometric, tighter, less fluid. On the side facade there are reliefs with palm trees and animal figures, which is not a usual choice in Anatolia and points to the visual vocabulary the Ilkhanids brought from further east. You have to look for them, so walk the facade slowly rather than heading straight for the door.

The ethnography section covers Erzurum's daily past: weaving, kitchens, clothing, oltu stone work. Seeing oltu stone here and then seeing it on a bench in the bazaar is a useful order, because you understand how it is worked before you are asked to buy any. Opening days and entry conditions can change, so verify officially.

4. Lala Mustafa Pasa Camii

An Ottoman mosque a few minutes' walk from the Yakutiye. It dates to the 16th century and it is generally the building people mean when they refer to the major Ottoman structure in central Erzurum. It has the familiar classical arrangement: a central dome, a square plan, a courtyard.

Its value is not really in itself, it is in where it stands. You leave the Yakutiye, walk a few hundred metres, and skip two centuries. In the Seljuk and Ilkhanid buildings the stone is dense, the space is low and inward, and the ornament detonates at chosen points. Here the space opens upward, gathers under the dome, and the light arrives from above. Same material, an entirely different logic.

That is the point of walking the centre in order. The city hands you architectural history chronologically, on foot, in about twenty minutes. Half an hour is plenty for the mosque itself. It is in use for worship, so plan outside prayer times and keep quiet inside.

5. Rustem Pasa Kervansarayi (Tashan)

A caravanserai in the centre, inside the bazaar, commissioned by Rustem Pasa, grand vizier and son-in-law of Suleiman the Magnificent, and built by the architect Sinan in the mid 16th century. Two storeys, a rectangular courtyard, rooms facing inward. But the architecture is not why you come.

Tashan today is the workshop and the shopfront of Erzurum's oltu stone craftspeople. Oltu stone is a black jet, matte and light, that comes out of the Oltu district of this province and is worked into prayer beads, rings and jewellery. In the rooms around the courtyard, craftspeople cut it, turn it, polish it and sell it in the same space. It is a working place, not a set dressed to look like one.

Go in even if you are not buying. Walk between the rooms and see raw stone and a finished set of beads within a metre of each other. The craftspeople will generally tell you where the stone came from. I will not quote prices, because they swing enormously with the quality of the stone and the work. Look at several rooms first.

6. Uc Kumbetler

Three tombs standing in an open patch a little south of the centre. The largest is attributed to the Saltuk period and the others to the Seljuks. Octagonal bodies, conical roofs, stone. They are modest in height and sparing in ornament, and that is exactly what makes them interesting.

There is no display here. Next to the overflowing carving on the Cifte Minareli portal these are close to bare: narrow windows in the drum, plain geometry in the roof, the natural colour of the stone. The buildings are not trying to impress you, they are trying to last. Eight hundred years later they are still standing, which suggests they solved the problem they set themselves.

Twenty minutes covers it. The ground around them is laid out and open and you can walk right round each one. The Erzurum Museum is very close, so put the two together. In winter, snow collects on the conical roofs and the geometry reads more clearly, which makes this one of the few places where standing outside in the cold actually pays you back.

7. Erzurum Kalesi and the Tepsi Minare

A castle in the middle of the city that does not rise far above it. Erzurum's defensive work went on for centuries, but what you see now is a stretch of wall, a courtyard, and a cylindrical tower inside it. That tower is the Tepsi Minare, built as a minaret and later converted into a clock tower.

The reason to climb is the view. Because the castle sits dead centre, you get the plan of the city from above: the flat run of the plateau, the mountain line at the edge of the plain, Palandoken to the south. This is where you understand why Erzurum is such an exposed, wind-scoured place, and you understand it from the parapet rather than from a map. Nothing interrupts the horizon.

The climb is short. In winter the steps can ice over, so proper footwear helps, and the wind up here is harder than below. Every building in the centre is visible from the top, so doing the castle early makes planning the rest of the day easier. Verify opening hours officially.

8. Erzurum Museum

The city's archaeology museum, right beside the Uc Kumbetler. It holds roughly two thousand objects running from prehistory through the Seljuk and Ottoman periods to the War of Independence. It is not a large museum and ninety minutes will cover it.

The value is in the range. The Erzurum plain has been settled for thousands of years and the material from the region's mounds is here. The medreses you walked past show you the 13th century; the museum shows you what was on this plain long before that. Put them together and Erzurum stops being a Seljuk city and becomes the most recent layer of a much older line of settlement.

There is also a War of Independence section, which is worth seeing before the Congress building, because it assembles the conditions that led to 1919 in one place. Opening days and entry conditions can change, so verify officially. Planning a museum day in winter is separately sensible: on a day when walking outside is not realistic, the central museums are what save it.

9. Erzurum Congress Building

This is where Erzurum enters the history of the republic. The Erzurum Congress met in this building from 23 July to 7 August 1919. The building was originally the Sanasaryan College, a school founded in 1881. It served as a military hospital during the war years, then passed to the state, and the congress was held here.

The congress decisions are one of the founding moments of the Turkish Republic: unconditional independence, rejection of any mandate or protectorate, national borders defined on the armistice lines, and a nine-member representative committee headed by Mustafa Kemal acting as an interim government. Part of the building is now arranged as the Congress and National Struggle Museum, and the hall where the congress sat, along with a couple of rooms, is open to visitors.

The hall itself is modest. Smaller than you expect, plain, benches and a lectern. That is precisely where its effect comes from: you walk into a room of that scale already knowing what followed from the decisions taken in it. Half an hour is enough, but do not rush it. Verify opening days officially.

10. Erzurum Ataturk House

A small house museum in the centre, near Lalapasa, arranged as the house where Mustafa Kemal stayed in Erzurum during the congress. If you have seen the Congress building it gains meaning. On its own it is not a destination.

House museums tend to resemble one another: period furniture, photographs, a few personal objects, a desk. This one is no exception. But it does one thing well. It shows what being in Erzurum in the summer of 1919 was like at the level of a day. The congress is a heading in a history book; this house shows where the people living underneath that heading slept and sat and wrote. It shrinks the scale and brings the event closer.

Twenty minutes covers the visit. It is walkable from the Congress building, so put the two in the same half day. Combined with the central museums, that gives you most of a cold day spent indoors. Verify the opening days and hours before you go, because small museums change their arrangements.

11. Aziziye Tabyasi

A fortification east of the city on the Kars road. It was part of Erzurum's defensive line in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78, and serious fighting happened here. The tabyas were built as a series spread around the city from north to south, and Aziziye was one of them.

Its weight in Erzurum is not military, it is emotional. The name of Nene Hatun is attached to this fortification and her grave is here. That story sits at the centre of how the city describes itself, and you only understand how alive it still is by standing here. Most of the people visiting are not tourists, they are from the region.

There is not much building to see: stone walls, trenches, a monument and the grave. Do not come for architecture. Come to understand which event the city's memory is hung on. It is a short drive east of the centre and it is on the way if you are heading out towards Pasinler or Cobandede. It is an exposed hilltop and genuinely cold in winter. Dress for standing outside for fifteen minutes.

12. Palandoken Ski Resort

Erzurum's second face. Palandoken is one of Turkey's main ski mountains and it lies southwest of the centre, a few kilometres out. That distance is the whole point. Most ski resorts require you to drive up a mountain road. Here you leave the city and you are at the bottom of the runs shortly afterwards. That combination is rare in Turkey.

The mountain is a serious one. The resort area starts around 2,200 m and the summit is above 3,000 m, so the skiable vertical is large. The runs are long and some are steep. Palandoken is not a beginners' hill, though there are sections set aside for beginners. Thanks to the altitude and the climate the snow is usually dry through the season.

Season matters. Skiing roughly covers the winter months and can run into spring higher up, but this changes every year. Come in summer and you will find closed facilities and a grass slope. Which lifts are turning, the dates for that particular year, and any night skiing all vary: verify officially before you travel.

13. Cobandede Koprusu

A bridge over the Aras river east of the centre, in the Koprukoy district. It was built at the end of the 13th century by Emir Coban Salduz, vizier of the Ilkhanids. It originally had seven arches and six are standing today, after flood damage in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Bridges do not usually impress. This one does. It crosses the Aras in a wide, empty plain, entirely alone. There is almost nothing around it, so the bridge is seen at its own scale: stone arches, the raised central span, the piers going down into the water. A structure that has taken seven hundred years of flood and lost only one arch.

It is on the road if you are driving east from Erzurum. Heading towards Kars, or out to Pasinler, you pass it anyway and no detour is needed. Half an hour is a fair stop. You can walk down beside it and look up from underneath, and parts of the deck can be walked. The plain is windy.

14. Narman Fairy Chimneys

Red fairy chimneys in the Narman district, northeast of Erzurum. Roughly ninety kilometres from the city, a few kilometres southeast of the district centre, in the ground between the villages of Yoldere and Alacayar. The area covers around 6,300 hectares, so what you are looking at is not a few rocks but an entire system of valleys.

Do not confuse this with Cappadocia. Those chimneys are pale volcanic tuff. Here the rock is upper Miocene sandstone, conglomerate and siltstone, and the colour comes from iron oxidising into Fe2O3. The result is a mass of red and orange turning towards purple in places. The shapes are more angular too, more canyon than cone. Not the same process, and not the same picture.

Light decides your visit. Midday sun washes the colour out; early morning and late afternoon saturate the red. Late spring to autumn is the window, because road conditions in winter can be a problem. You need a car, and the sensible plan is to make Narman the end of the day, because the drive back is not short.

15. Tortum Lake

North of Erzurum, in the Uzundere district. Let me be direct because this is regularly confused: Tortum Lake is not in Artvin. Uzundere is an Erzurum district, and both the lake and the waterfall are in it.

The lake's story is geological and recent. In 1791 limestone blocks broke away from the slope of Kemerlidag and blocked the stream, forming a natural dam around fifty metres high. Water backed up behind it and the lake formed. So this is a landslide-dammed lake, about two hundred and thirty years old, and the water spilling over that dam is what created the waterfall. The lake and the falls are two parts of the same event.

As a view, the lake is long and narrow with steep slopes on both sides. Driving along it you follow the water, and the colour shifts from deep green to something muddier depending on the weather. There is not much to do around a lake, but you pass it on the way to the waterfall anyway. The road is asphalt and fine in an ordinary car.

16. Tortum Waterfall

The falls where the water spills over the natural dam that made the lake, in the Uzundere district. It is Erzurum's best-known natural site and is counted among Turkey's higher waterfalls. It is a few kilometres north of the lake, on the same road.

A warning is required. The flow is extremely variable. Some of the water is diverted to a hydroelectric plant, so the regime depends on the season and on how the plant is running. In spring and early summer, when the snowmelt is coming through, it runs hard. By late summer and autumn it can drop to a thin ribbon or nearly stop. Seeing the waterfall means going at the right time, and the right time is roughly May to July.

There are viewing terraces and a stepped path down. From below you get a better sense of the scale, but the steps can be wet and slippery. How the flow is running on a given day, and whether the site is open, can both change. Verifying officially before you set out is what stops a long drive from being wasted.

17. Osk Monastery

A monastery church in the village of Camliyamac, formerly Oski, in the Uzundere district. It was built between 963 and 973, under David III Kuropalates, ruler of Tao. So this is a thousand-year-old Georgian Orthodox building inside the province of Erzurum.

You do not expect it, and that is the point. Having spent two days reading Erzurum through the Seljuks and the Ottomans, you drive north and walk into a completely different architectural tradition. The church has a tetraconch plan and a central dome, and its facades carry Georgian inscriptions, reliefs and figural stone carving. The scale is large: standing in a village, among houses, it is far bigger than it has any business being.

The building is abandoned and ruined today. It was used at times as a mosque and as storage. Conservation and restoration work is on the agenda between Georgia and Turkey. What you see is a ruin, part of the roof gone, grass growing inside. That does not make it less impressive. The village road is narrow, drivable, but slow down for the last stretch.

18. Hahuli Monastery

In the village of Bagbasi in the Tortum district. It is the main church of a Georgian monastery founded in the 10th century, its founder again David III Kuropalates of Tao. The complex originally comprised one main church and around ten smaller ones, enclosed by walls.

The difference from Osk is that this one is intact. The main church was converted to a mosque in the 19th century and is in use today under the name Tas Camii. It briefly functioned as a church again after the war of 1877-78, then returned to being a mosque. A thousand-year-old building that has never been left empty, which is why its roof, walls and dome are still there.

You can go inside, but it is a mosque, so respect the arrangements for worship. Outside, look at the stone reliefs on the facades: animal figures, an eagle, a lion, and the particular motifs of Georgian stonework. These are not things you expect on a mosque, and they tell the building's history in one glance. Put it in the same day as Osk, a short drive apart.

When to go

Choosing a season in Erzurum is sharper than in most cities, because there are two different cities here and you have to decide which one you want.

December to March for skiing. Palandoken is running, the snow has settled, and the city is in winter mode. In exchange you get a real winter. Erzurum has one of the coldest climates of any Turkish city, and minus 20 C is not news here, it is an ordinary January day. If you are skiing that is not a problem, it is the entire proposition: dry snow, a long season, clear skies. If you are not skiing, the same weather is a problem, because seeing the medreses means walking outdoors and the outdoors sends you back inside quickly.

June to September for the stone, the museums and the day trips. The plateau summer is short but good: warm days, cool nights, dry air. The Tortum and Narman roads are open and the village roads to Osk and Hahuli are straightforward. For the waterfall you need to be more specific: May to July for strong water, weak after that.

Spring and autumn fall between the two. April and May can still have snow at altitude while the centre becomes walkable. November to early December is the weakest window: too early to ski, too cold to sightsee.

If you are coming in winter, bring a genuine winter coat, thermal layers, waterproof boots with grip, gloves and a hat. A wardrobe assembled for an Istanbul winter does not work here. The altitude also makes the sun deceptive: a sunny day does not mean a warm one, and sunglasses on snow are not optional.

Getting there

Flying is the practical option. Erzurum has an airport close to the city, with scheduled services from Istanbul and Ankara. Frequencies can increase over the ski season. Cancellations and delays from heavy snow or fog happen and are not unusual in this region, so build connecting plans accordingly and verify current schedules officially.

The train is Erzurum's romantic option. The Dogu Ekspresi runs between Ankara and Kars and Erzurum is on the line, so you can arrive by train or pick it up here and continue to Kars. The journey is long. It is not a fast way to travel, it is the trip itself, and in winter what passes the window explains the line's reputation. Seats can be hard to get, particularly in winter, and schedules change, so check officially.

Intercity buses serve Erzurum, but the distances are large. Coming from Ankara by bus is a long undertaking and winter road conditions make it longer.

In the city, the centre is walkable. The Cifte Minareli, Ulu Camii, Yakutiye, Lala Mustafa Pasa, Tashan, the castle, the Uc Kumbetler and the museum are all close together and fit into one day on foot. The Congress building and the Ataturk House are within walking distance too. Palandoken is reached by taxi or hotel shuttle.

For the day trips you need a car. Tortum, Narman, Osk, Hahuli and Cobandede are in different directions and cannot be done by public transport in a reasonable time. If you are renting in winter, settle the winter tyre question in advance and allow for mountain roads closing with snow.

What to eat

Cag kebabi is Erzurum's signature and it originates in this region. The difference is in the cooking. The meat turns on a horizontal spit, not a vertical one, facing a wood fire. Lamb is marinated with onion and spice, threaded onto the spit, left for hours, then rotated horizontally in front of the flame. As the outer surface cooks the cook slices it off and arranges the slices onto small skewers. What arrives is that small skewer, in your hand, not on a plate.

There is a way to eat it. You wrap it in thin lavas bread, with onion, tomato and greens alongside. The portion is counted in skewers. It has to arrive hot, which means it does not all come the moment you sit down, it comes as it is cut. Do not rush.

Kadayif dolmasi is the dessert side. Walnut halves are wrapped in kadayif threads, fried and dropped into syrup. Described like that it sounds like any syrup dessert, but the texture is different: crisp outside, walnut inside, and not weighed down by the syrup. It is not common outside Erzurum, so try it while you are here.

Around those two sits the general cuisine of the region: meat-heavy, plain, built for plateau conditions. In winter hot soup is everywhere and it genuinely earns its place. Along with oltu stone, cag kebabi is one of the two things that carries Erzurum's name. Both come from this region and both are still made here.

I am not naming restaurants. Cag kebabi is cooked in many places in the centre and the quality varies from one to the next. Two things to look for: meat actually turning in front of the fire, and meat served as it is sliced. Pre-cut meat that has been sitting is not what you want.

Notes on Palandoken

Palandoken deserves its own heading, because some people come to Erzurum only for this and others miss it entirely.

Its closeness to the centre is genuinely unusual. Turkish ski resorts are normally well away from the nearest city, with a mountain road in between, and accommodation limited to the hotels at the base. Palandoken is not like that. The runs begin a few kilometres southwest of central Erzurum. You can stay in the city, go up to the mountain, and come back down in the evening. That means your accommodation is not restricted to resort hotels, and it means anyone in your group who does not ski has a whole city to spend the day in. At most ski resorts, neither is true.

The mountain itself is serious. The skiable vertical is large, the runs are long, and there are steep sections. The snow is usually dry thanks to the altitude and the climate, which is a clear advantage over Turkey's lower and milder resorts. The season is long and can run into spring at the top.

Be careful about the season. Skiing roughly covers the winter months, but opening and closing dates move every year with the snow. You can arrive in early November and find the runs shut, or in April and find the upper mountain still open. This is not something to guess at. It is something to ask.

Verify these officially and from nowhere else: which lifts are operating, the opening and closing dates for that year, ski pass arrangements and prices, equipment hire conditions, whether night skiing is running and its hours, and the state of the ski school and instructors. All of it changes year to year, sometimes week to week. Most of the third-hand information online is out of date.

If you do not ski, there is little point going up in summer. The facilities are closed and the slope is just a slope. You can drive up for the view, but arriving at a ski resort and finding no ski resort is one of the most common mistakes made in this city.

Frequently asked questions

**How many days do I need in Erzurum?**

One full day for the centre. The Cifte Minareli, Ulu Camii, Yakutiye, Lala Mustafa Pasa, Tashan, the castle, the Uc Kumbetler and the museum are all walkable, and adding the Congress building and the Ataturk House still fits in a day, tightly. Add as many days as you want for skiing at Palandoken. For the day trips, allow one day for the Tortum and monastery direction and one for Narman. So a sensible plan is three days, or five with skiing.

**Is it worth going in winter?**

If you ski, yes, and winter is the only sensible choice. If you do not, it is more complicated. A snow-covered Erzurum centre is striking and the museums are open, but the time you can spend outdoors at minus 20 C is limited. If you plan to see the centre in winter, build the day out of short outdoor legs and long museum stops. Most people who try it without dressing properly give up halfway through the plan.

**Is Tortum Waterfall in Erzurum or Artvin?**

Erzurum. Both the waterfall and Tortum Lake are inside the Uzundere district of Erzurum province. The confusion is geographical: the area is on the road towards Artvin and feels closer to Artvin than to central Erzurum. Administratively it is Erzurum. When the water actually runs strongly is a separate question, and the answer is roughly May to July. Flow can drop sharply by late summer.

**When should I go to Palandoken and when are the lifts open?**

The ski season roughly covers the winter months and can extend into spring at higher elevations, but the dates shift every year with the snow. For exact opening and closing dates, which lifts are running, and ski pass and hire conditions, verify officially. In summer the facilities are closed and there is only the view.

**What is cag kebabi and how is it different from doner?**

Both are meat rotated on a spit, but cag kebabi turns horizontally and doner turns vertically. For cag kebabi, lamb is marinated with onion and spice and rested, then rotated horizontally in front of a wood fire. It is sliced as it cooks and arranged onto small skewers, and it reaches you on the skewer rather than on a plate. You wrap it in lavas. Cag kebabi comes from this region, and the way it is made in Erzurum is not quite the way it is made elsewhere.

**Do I need to rent a car?**

Not for the centre, which is entirely walkable. Not for Palandoken either, since taxis and hotel shuttles run. But yes for Tortum, Narman, Osk, Hahuli and Cobandede. They are in different directions, the distances are long, and public transport cannot cover them in reasonable time. If you are renting in winter, settle the winter tyre question and the possibility of mountain roads closing before you book.

**What is oltu stone and where do I buy it?**

A black, matte, light jet stone that comes out of the Oltu district of Erzurum province. It is worked into prayer beads, rings and jewellery. The Rustem Pasa Kervansarayi in the centre, Tashan, is where craftspeople both work it and sell it, so you can see it made and buy it in the same room. Price varies enormously with the quality of the stone and the work, so compare several benches before buying.