The bedesten of Gümüşhacıköy is in the Haciyahya quarter of the district, seventy kilometres from the city of Amasya. It was built by Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who wanted a complex to stand beside the mosque raised in his name in 1660. The complex had a caravanserai as well, but that has been lost; the covered market survived, through significant repairs.
The building is a long rectangle with four doors. In essence it is a corridor of about eighty metres running between the western and eastern doors, three and a half metres wide, lined on both sides by shops. The doors are wide and deeply arched, built of red and white cut stone, and only the northern one has come down in its original state. The shopfronts along the corridor are topped by pointed arches with buttresses between them. Above the eastern door, which faces the Ekin Pazarı square, stands a circular clock tower of the same cut stone. The original tower was put up by Ali Rıza Bey, son of Yanyali Mustafa Pasha, during a general restoration in 1900; it later collapsed, and what stands now is a later rebuilding.
Getting there
- Access
- In the Hacıyahya neighbourhood of Gümüşhacıköy, 70 kilometres from central Amasya.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Amasya as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.7 °C in January to 23.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (55 mm) and lightest in August (10 mm). Long-term means for 1961-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
