The house stands in the Halil Efendi quarter of central Ardahan and is one of the examples of domestic architecture built at the end of the nineteenth century. It has two storeys under a sloping pyramidal roof.
The lower floor is closed, and the lavatories are on that level. The main entrance is from the north, and the upper floor can also be reached by a wooden stair on the outside. The door on the east side leads into the lower floor.
As in the other domestic buildings of the region, the walls are thick and open to the outside through few windows: six on the upper floor and, below, three small slit windows on the south. The west front is treated as a small balcony resting on wooden supports.
The house is built throughout of neatly cut blocks. Its doors and windows are narrow and tall, and their jambs are formed of regular blocks set proud of the wall, shifted rhythmically one in and one out. In its doors, windows and walls it runs parallel with the domestic architecture of Sarıkamış, Kars, Gyumri and the Caucasian and Georgian regions.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Ardahan as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -11.2 °C in January to 16.1 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in July and August; rainfall is heaviest in June (92 mm) and lightest in January (20 mm). Long-term means for 1958-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
