Guide
The Seljuk Palace is one of the registered monuments of the Ani archaeological site, built on a steep rock on the slope overlooking the Bostanlar stream at the northwest of the city. Its date is not known; on the evidence of its architecture and the treatment of its portal it is thought to belong to the twelfth or thirteenth century. It was originally two storeys of regular cut stone, but the timber upper floor has gone, so what survives is the ground floor and the basement.
The vaulted, arched rooms of the basement were used as stores through the winter, while the L-shaped ground floor was the palace proper: a rectangular building with a large hall and rooms distributed around it, decorated in the characteristic Seljuk manner of the twelfth century. The portal is the piece to look at — composed of star motifs, it is among the finest Seljuk stone carving at Ani. The other feature worth noticing is the fountain inside the building. The palace is within the Ani site at Ocaklı village; buses run there twice a day from central Kars, and tour operators and private cars also make the trip.
