The Taşhan in Sivas is a nineteenth-century caravanserai of cut stone, two storeys around an open courtyard, now a business centre of shops and cafes. The entrances on the east, south and north are round-arched with iron leaves. The courtyard is paved with stone blocks, and at its centre is an elliptical stone pool where water runs from the mouths of double-headed lions facing in opposite directions. On the north and south sides of the courtyard, shops are ranged behind arcades formed by six large columns with monolithic cylindrical shafts, linked to one another by flat lintels.
Stone stairs beside the south and east entrances lead to the upper floor, which like the ground floor has six columns and arcades, here linked by round arches. The rooms behind the arcade and the arcade itself are barrel-vaulted, while from outside each space is covered by a hipped roof with grooved tiles. The ground-floor shops are glazed along their whole width, and those on the north face both inward and outward; the upper rooms have rectangular windows with iron grilles. An elliptical window is set in the outer triangular gable of each hipped roof. The building is used today as a business centre with shops and cafes, two hundred metres from the historic town square.
Getting there
- Access
- The han is in the middle of Sivas, 200 m from the historic town square and within walking distance of it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Sivas as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -3.3 °C in January to 20.3 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (60 mm) and lightest in August (7 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
