The subject here is the waqf — the endowment, the instrument through which mosques, kitchens, schools and fountains were founded and kept running from Ottoman times onward. Bursa's metropolitan municipality opened the museum in February 2017 inside the Atatürk Congress and Culture Centre at Merinos, on 405 square metres, and counted it as the sixteenth museum it had brought to the city.
Rather than gather originals, the museum had the finest Bursa examples of waqf elements copied and made as miniatures, working from the city's own endowment deeds, which the municipality had published. Beside them stand real objects: 113 calligraphic panels from the Emirsultan Mosque, restored by the municipality under a protocol with the regional directorate of foundations, together with 16 carpets and kilims, 22 candlesticks and three Qur'ans.
The municipality credits Uludağ University, the General Directorate of Foundations and its regional directorate with helping to put the museum together. It sits in the same building as several of the city's other municipal museums, which makes it easy to combine with them in one visit.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bursa as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 5.4 °C in January to 24.6 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in August (18 mm). Long-term means for 1927-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
