Guide
Kadıoğlu Sokak, in the Aşağı Kayabaşı quarter of central Niğde, is a street rather than a single monument: a group of traditional houses that together show how the Turkish house was built in this town. The walls are load-bearing, laid up from dressed, semi-dressed and rubble stone bedded in a sand and lime mortar, with timber tie beams run through the courses and window openings breaking the mass. Ceilings are timber, carried either directly on the walls or on stone, marble or wooden posts by way of pointed arches.
Almost all of these are dwellings of ground floor plus one, clustered at the middle of the street and at its corners. You enter through a double-leaf wooden door at ground level, then climb a single or a facing pair of stone stairs from an intermediate space to the wooden balcony of the upper floor; from the balcony you reach the courtyard and from the courtyard the rooms. Windows on both levels are sized in proportion to one another. Most houses have a garden, and the garden gates are treated with some ceremony. Roofs were originally flat, though most now carry hipped roofs. Few of the houses have a building inscription or a foundation deed, but on the evidence of those that do, and of the style of the rest, the group belongs to the late Ottoman nineteenth century. Many have been neglected and are now in poor condition. The street is within walking distance of central Niğde.
