Escape the Crowds

Sivrihisar's forest of wooden columns

Sixty-seven wooden columns holding up a Seljuk mosque on the Ankara road — Eskişehir's first UNESCO World Heritage listing.

Freea full daya weekday, outside prayer times; Fridays are busy

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Why do it?

Sivrihisar is a small hill town about a hundred kilometres east of Eskişehir on the road to Ankara, under a jagged ridge of rock. Its Ulu Cami was built in 1232 under the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I and rebuilt in 1274, and inside it is one of the largest wooden hypostyle halls in Anatolia: 67 timber columns of juniper and pine holding a flat timber roof, several of them topped with stone capitals reused from older buildings — local tradition says from Pessinus, the ancient sanctuary of Cybele about sixteen kilometres away. In 2023 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List with four other wooden-columned medieval mosques of Anatolia, the first World Heritage site in Eskişehir province. Tradition also makes Sivrihisar's district the birthplace of Nasreddin Hoca, the folk joker of a thousand stories.

The Smileys Take

Go mid-morning, step inside, and let your eyes adjust — the light falls through the high windows onto the columns and it feels more like a wood than a building. Find the carved walnut minbar and look closely at the column capitals. It is a working mosque, so visit outside prayer times, cover up and take your shoes off. Then walk the old lanes of the town and up towards the rocks for the view. With a car you can add Pessinus at Ballıhisar on the same day; by public transport, take an Ankara-bound bus and ask to be let off at Sivrihisar.