Eskişehir Highlights
A curated tour of Turkey's liveliest university city, from timber-framed Ottoman streets and world-class museums to a fairy-tale park and Phrygian rock monuments in the countryside.
Trip Stops
- 1
Cobbled lanes of Ottoman timber houses with overhanging upper floors. The name means "firewood market", and the district sits on Turkey's UNESCO Tentative List.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 2
A 16th-century Ottoman complex named for its lead-covered dome. Its old madrasa and caravanserai now hold the Meerschaum Gallery and glass-blowing studios.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 3
An 1850s caravanserai rebuilt in 2006 to its original design, now full of workshops making and selling meerschaum pipes and jewellery, marbling and other traditional crafts. Meerschaum is nicknamed "Eskişehir stone" and "white gold".
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 4
Kengo Kuma's stacked-timber art museum opened in 2019, echoing the district's wood-market past. Its boxes step down to match the scale of the neighbouring Ottoman houses.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 5
A rare Turkish museum devoted to contemporary glass, built from works donated by about 70 Turkish and international artists. It sits right beside the Odunpazarı museum cluster.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 6
Nearly 200 wax figures by the city's former mayor, who took up wax sculpting after seeing a poor Atatürk likeness at Madame Tussauds in 1996. Ticket revenue funds education for female and disabled students.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 7
Phrygian, Hittite, Roman and Byzantine finds from across the region. It opened in 2011 and was the first museum in Turkey built with private-sector funding and donated to the state.
📍 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 8
The river that gave Eskişehir its Venice-and-Amsterdam reputation, lined with cafés, bridges and gondola rides. Its ancient name was the Tembris.
📍 Tepebaşı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 9
A 1930s market hall renovated in 2001 into a shopping and café hub, with vintage chandeliers, a cobblestone floor and exposed brick. Browse souvenir, jewellery and art shops, then grab Turkish desserts or live music in the cafés and bars.
📍 Tepebaşı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 10
Home of Devrim, Turkey's first domestically built car (1961), displayed at the factory where it was made. It ran out of fuel during its debut drive in front of Parliament and went home to Eskişehir by train; the first Turkish steam locomotive, Karakurt, sits in the garden.
📍 Tepebaşı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 11
A 2008 theme park of lakes, a zoo, a planetarium and the fairy-tale Masal Castle, nicknamed Eskişehir's "Disneyland". It also has miniature replicas of Turkic-world monuments.
📍 Tepebaşı, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 12
A hilltop Seljuk-Ottoman shrine complex, begun in 1208 on the site of an older monastery of Archangel Michael. It honours the legendary warrior Battal Gazi, who also starred in a cult Turkish film that pitted him against space aliens.
📍 Seyitgazi, Eskişehir, Turkey
- 13
A 16-metre Phrygian rock façade carved to imitate a megaron, with an Old Phrygian inscription naming Midas. It is the finest of Midas City's rock-cut monuments, about 66 km south of Eskişehir.
📍 Han, Eskişehir, Turkey
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