Ulus and Hamamönü

The day after returning to Ankara from Antalya, I gave my dad a tour of Ulus. Ulus is truly the "old town" of Ankara and my favorite part of the city. We took the dolmuş from our neighborhood to the covered pazar.

From the pazar we walked through the metalworks district and up the steep streets where other vendors peddle their wares on our way to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. The museum is housed in an old Ottoman inn, and unfortunately currently under renovation (although the admission price is the same...). So, dad only got to see some of the treasures, namely Hittite artifacts dating back to 1500 B.C.

This cuneiform tablet was taken from Hattuşa and dates to the 1200's B.C.

From the museum we walked to get some photos of the Ankara Kalesi, the ancient fortress overlooking all of Ankara.

Plenty of people still live in the old houses within the fortress walls.

An exterior view of the walls. Notice the houses built into the walls.

This is a picture of a tower in the fortress. Among the huge stones in the middle part you can see what appears to be a Crusader's cross on one of the stones. Possibly from its conquering by Crusaders in 1101, or possibly just a relic from Armenians who used to live here.

From there we could look down onto Hamamönü, a part of the city where the houses had been restored to look like the Ottoman era. The city had been hyping this restoration effort in the local news, so we went down to see it. Check out the interactive website the city has created for Hamamönü.

This old portion of Ankara adjacent to Ulus has run-down houses that are mostly slated for demolition by the city. They will be replaced with high-rises, which is how the rest of Ankara has been greatly transformed over the last 30 years.

Hamamönü is to the center/left.

After walking the streets of Hamamönü and being relatively unimpressed, we came across the Haci Bayram mosque attached to the site of the ancient Temple of Augustus. To my shame, I didn't even know this existed, although I'd visited other Roman ruins in Ankara. The Augustus temple was built in 25-20 B.C. after the Romans conquered Anatolia. The mosque was built in 1425 A.D. by the new Turkish rulers of Anatolia, not long before Istanbul was conquered.

The temple walls. Greek inscriptions still visible on the wall are of historical importance.

After leaving the temple area just as Friday prayers were getting ready to begin, we payed our respects to Mustafa Kemal Paşa before hopping the bus to do more shopping on our side of town.

Seeing the statue honoring Turkey's great modernizer so close in proximity to its diverse ancient history is always thought-provoking.

After a fun evening of Central Asian cuisine, my parents flew back to the U.S. on Saturday. They enjoyed their Turkish vacation.