Guide
Before planning anything: the ministry states that Hazeranlar Konağı has been closed to visitors since 11 November 2024 for repair and redisplay work, with no completion date given.
The mansion was built in 1865 by Hasan Talat Efendi, treasurer to Ziya Paşa, the governor of Amasya. His father Aziz Mahmut Bey had served at the Ottoman palace as an alchemist or chemist before being posted to Amasya as treasurer; he married a local woman, Leyla, and their two children were named Hasan and Hazeran.
Where the name comes from is genuinely unsettled, and the ministry offers three accounts without choosing between them. One is that Hasan Talat Efendi was later posted to Albania and his sister Hazeran Hanım lived in the house for many years afterwards. Another is that Hazeran Hanım's husband traded in the cane chairs known as hazeran. A third is that Hasan Talat Bey, a close friend of Ziya Paşa and a poet himself, lived here with three nieces, one of whom — Hatice Hanım — and her daughter stayed on for years.
The house came close to being lost. It was damaged in the Erzincan earthquake of 1939 and flooded by the Yeşilırmak in 1944, 1948 and 1952. Hatice Hanım partitioned the interior and let it out; it was neglected, and sold in 1968. The new owners wanted to replace it with a concrete building and began quietly demolishing it from the inside; when this was discovered the Ministry of Culture expropriated it in 1976. Restoration ran from 1976 to 1979, the display was arranged by 1983, and it opened on 12 June 1984 as an ethnographic museum house.
Two pieces of painted decoration are worth looking for. On the triangular pediment of the selamlik's north facade, inside a laurel wreath, is the monogram of Sultan Abdülaziz, with a naturalistic spray of roses in the upper right corner. Above the entrance to the harem section, on the pediment of the north eyvan facing the courtyard, is the inscription 'Masaallahu Kane' with the Hijri date 1283 — written, as such inscriptions usually are, to keep the evil eye away.
The route through the house is fixed. From the ticket desk in the harem section you pass through the pantry to the selamlik stairs, see the selamlik hall and its rooms, then go through a double door into the second-floor central hall of the harem, down a double-flight staircase to the first-floor central hall, and out again past the ticket desk.
