Behind plain rubble-stone walls, the Mahmut Bey Camisi in Kasaba village, 18 kilometres from Kastamonu, hides an interior made entirely of wood and painted throughout with natural madder colours that have survived in their original state. It was built in 1366, in the time of the Candaroğulları, and in 2023 it was one of five wooden hypostyle mosques of medieval Anatolia inscribed together on the UNESCO list.
The wooden roof was put together without any metal fittings or nails, using an overlapping technique, and plaster appears only at the mihrab. The painted decoration combines reds between orange and carmine, indigo and sky blues, golden and dull yellows, white, black, dark green and cream, in stylised plant and geometric motifs built on symmetry and repetition.
The carved wooden entrance door, made by the Ankara craftsman Nakkaş Mahmutoğlu Abdullah and decorated with geometric and plant details, is a piece with very few parallels in Türkiye; the original is kept in the Kastamonu Etnografya Müzesi, and a copy by the Kastamonu woodcarver Hikmet Değirmencioğlu stands in its place. The other mosques on the UNESCO list are the Ulu Cami in Afyonkarahisar, the Sivrihisar Ulu Cami in Eskişehir, the Ahi Şerafettin (Arslanhane) Camisi in Ankara and the Eşrefoğlu Camisi in Konya.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kastamonu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.9 °C in January to 20.2 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (75 mm) and lightest in February (27 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
