The Mihal Bey han at Gölpazarı was built for caravans to stop and rest, and it belongs to the chain of hans and caravanserais running from Gölpazarı towards Ankara that includes Vezirhan, Mahan, Taşhan, Katirhan, Nallıhan and Cayirhan. It is a thick-walled rectangular building of large stone blocks under a half-cylindrical vault, running east to west and divided along that axis into four sections. The entrance is on the west front, and the sections beyond it are covered with barrel vaults linked to one another by pointed reinforcing arches. These spaces have no opening at all on the north; light comes from a single rectangular slit window set on the axis of the south wall of each section. The walls are built in the framed technique, a course of brick alternating with a course of cut stone and single bricks set vertically between them. There is no decoration.
The inscription above the door names the founder and gives the dates, and the Ministry renders it thus: that the building of this blessed structure was begun by Mihal Bey, a man of charity, a reliever of hardship and the most just of rulers, in the Hijri year 818, that is 1415, and completed in the year 812, that is 1418.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bilecik as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.6 °C in January to 22.2 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (55 mm) and lightest in August (13 mm). Long-term means for 1939-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
