Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & license
Historic Stone Bridge & Kars River Bathhouses
The stone bridge of three cut-basalt arches across the Kars River between Kaleiçi and Sukapı, with the Ottoman bathhouses along the banks.
The directorate dates Taş Köprü to 1579, under Murat III, and to Lala Mustafa Pasha. The bridge was later partly ruined and was rebuilt in 1725 by Karahanoğlu Hacı Ebübekir. The bathhouse page names Mazlum Oğlu, also called Mazlumağa, and Topçuoğlu as early-17th-century buildings on the east bank, and İlbeyoğlu on the west bank. The Cuma bath in this stop’s name is the riverside bath that local speech places in the same gorge cluster; the directorate does not date that name on its own, so do not merge Cuma and Mazlumağa into one identified building.
Why visit
To catch the basalt bridge parapet, the bathhouse domes, and the citadel on the opposite rock in one canyon frame.
The domes read most clearly from the path that approaches the bridge along the citadel-side bank.
