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Municipality in Turkey
Photo: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Bolu is a city in the Western Karadeniz (Black Sea) region of Turkey, with a population of 184,682 in 2021. It's 260 km east of Istanbul and 190 km northwest of Ankara so it might make a stopover. The town itself has a few antiquities but is otherwise modern and humdrum, but around it are forested mountains dotted by lakes, ski resorts, and villages that have preserved their traditional architecture.
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The ground floor has archaeological exhibits from the Neolithic, Bronze, Phyrgian, Urartuian, Lydian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine ages. The upper floor is ethnography.
This was first built in 1382 AD by "Yıldırım" Bayezid (meaning "thunderbolt" for the way he rushed impetuously into battle, eventually at the cost of his life). Its medresa and library disappeared then the wooden mosque burned down in 1891. It was rebuilt in stone in 1899 with a dome and twin minarets, and restored after earthquake damage in 1944 and 1999.
Basic but clean and central.
Simple clean central hotel.
Good efficient hotel at junction of D100, west edge of town.
Buses run hourly from Istanbul and take 4-5 hours via Gebze, for a fare in 2024 or 450 TL. From Ankara takes three hours. Bus lines are Metroturizm and Flixbus.
Read in the guideThe area of interest in town is very compact and won't take long to walk around.
Read in the guideChoose an airport to see hotels, stations, taxi ranks and car rental desks around it.
Zonguldak · Regional · ONQ
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