Guide
The Çakırağa Mansion is one of the few houses in the Aegean region to have kept the architectural manner of the first building there. The general view is that it was commissioned by Şerif Aliağa; elsewhere the directorate gives the builder as Çakıroğlu Mehmet Bey, a wealthy merchant, and the date as 1761. After many years of dereliction it was restored and turned into a museum, and it is an important source for understanding Ottoman daily life in Turkish architecture.
One of the finest examples of the wooden Turkish house, the mansion stands at the end of a garden full of flowers, screened from the road behind high walls. It has three storeys. On the ground floor are the flagged hall, the kitchen, the stable and a room where guests waited. The second floor, used in winter, is the better sheltered. Every room opens onto a wide central hall, and the house is heated by fireplaces. The painted decoration on the walls and ceilings and the wood carving in the rooms are both worth attention, and the guest rooms have washing alcoves.
The third floor, the summer storey, is reached by lifting a trapdoor at the head of the stairs. It is lighter than the rest and richer in painted work, and it holds two wall paintings.
Çakıroğlu Mehmet Bey married two women, one from İzmir and one from İstanbul. So that neither should pine for home, he had a view of each city painted on the walls of their rooms. The paintings matter both as records of how those cities looked at the time and as works of art in themselves. Ornamented with flowers and motifs outside as well as in, the house draws a great many visitors.
Restoration was begun by the ministry of culture in 1977. In 1983 the surrounding land was expropriated so that the original architectural fabric could be preserved. The interior arrangement and the display were the work of the İzmir Archaeological Museum and the Ödemiş Museum.
Entry fee
- Single entry to the museum or site · Local
- MüzeKart
- Single entry to the museum or site · Foreign
- €3
