The Yıldırım Bayezid bath in the centre of Mudurnu stands near the mosque of the same name and was built in the same year, 1382. According to the inscription over the men's entrance and the summary of its endowment deed, Bayezid I had it made by Ömer bin İbrahim, the architect who seven years later built the Orta Hamam in Bolu. It is a double bath, with the men's changing room to the east and the women's to the west, and it still works as a bath.
The provincial directorate counts it among the finest baths built in its period, and points to two things in particular: the portal and the transitions to the dome.
The walls throughout are rubble stone; only the eaves mouldings are cut stone, and the joints between the stones are pointed. On the entrance front the walls are very thick, and the entrance runs between them as a passage, with muqarnas ornament above the door. Over a square plan the walls carry a dome hidden inside a drum that is cylindrical at first and then made octagonal, covered outside by a low pyramidal tiled roof. Large iwans flank the hot room on its east and west sides. In the private chamber opening off the men's hot room, muqarnas piers rise from the middle of each of the four sides. The women's changing room is a nearly square rectangle with a wooden ceiling, and their hot room is domed at the centre with two iwans at the sides and private chambers. Repair has replaced much of the wall stone apart from the portal.
Getting there
- Access
- In the centre of Mudurnu.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bolu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.6 °C in January to 20 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (61 mm) and lightest in August (24 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
