Escape the Crowds

Beypazarı: Ottoman houses, carrots and güveç

A hill town of three thousand timber houses ninety minutes west — meat and vegetables baked in clay, eighty-layer baklava, and a carrot on every corner.

₺a full daya weekday if you can; the festival weekend at the end of September if you like a crowd

Save for later — join Smileys

Why do it?

Beypazarı is the day trip every Ankara family has made: about a hundred kilometres west on the Eskişehir road, a town of steep lanes, and more than three thousand registered Ottoman houses in white plaster and dark timber, with bay windows leaning over the street. It was a stop on the Silk Road and a wealthy market town, and it has spent the last twenty-five years restoring itself and learning to feed visitors. The food is the point: güveç (lamb or beef baked with vegetables in an earthenware pot), yaprak sarma, tarhana soup, the 80-katlı baklava, the dry Beypazarı kurusu biscuits that go home in everyone's bag, and the town's own mineral water. And carrots — Beypazarı grows a large share of Turkey's, so there are carrot juices, carrot lokum and a carrot statue in the square. The international festival, running since 1994, is held over a long weekend in late September.

The Smileys Take

Take a shared car or the intercity bus from AŞTİ and give it the whole day. Walk the old quarter first, before lunch, climbing to the Hıdırlık viewpoint for the roof-tiles-and-hills panorama; then sit down for güveç, which takes time and should. Buy kurusu and mineral water for home. On a weekend the main lanes are busy and the restaurants rush; a weekday is calmer and the shopkeepers talk. The 2026 festival is announced for 26–28 September with concerts and stalls — ⚠ VERIFY the dates and whether you actually want the crowd before bringing a group that weekend. This is our favourite first road day out of Ankara: cheap, easy, and everyone eats too much.

Don't miss

The old quarter lanes and the konak museums — the Yaşayan Müze ('living museum') if you want the interiors.
Hıdırlık Tepesi for the view over the town.
Güveç for lunch, and the 80-katlı baklava afterwards.
Beypazarı kurusu and a crate of the local maden suyu to take home.
The Saturday market in the square, if you land on one.