The Yalıboyu mansions on the bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya are no longer only a facade to be photographed. After long years of restoration, some of these buildings are used as lodging. That a nineteenth-century house, laid out according to the haremlik and selamlık division of a single family, now receives overnight guests as a business in the twenty-first century is a process in which heritage law and tourism regulation come into play at the same time. The architecture of the houses, their plan types and their bay-window arrangement are a separate subject, treated in the article on the Yalıboyu houses. This article deals instead with why, under which rules and within which limits these houses can be run as hotels, guesthouses or lodges.

From Mansion to Lodging

Most of the Yalıboyu houses standing today date from the second half of the nineteenth century. Because the city lies in an earthquake zone, because fires broke out at various times and because timber is not long-lived, no earlier examples of domestic building have survived. Floods of the Yeşilırmak and the 1939 Erzincan earthquake also damaged the buildings. According to a statement an architect working in Amasya gave to a newspaper in 2021, the city's location in a first-degree earthquake zone, the fire of 1915, the earthquake of 1939 and periodic floods all affected the dwellings, and the quarter that suffered least was Hatuniye. The survival of the Yalıboyu houses owes something to this relatively fortunate position of the neighbourhood.

In the nineteenth century the function of the houses was residential. Divided into a haremlik and a selamlık block, with courtyards and gardens, these dwellings saw family life move between courtyard and rooms with the seasons, and guests were received in the selamlık. By the middle of the twentieth century the picture had changed. Families partitioned the interiors in order to let them, some mansions stood neglected for long periods, owners changed, and in some buildings demolition began with the intention of replacing them with a reinforced-concrete block. Hazeranlar Mansion is the best-known example of this process. It was sold in 1968, its new owners began to demolish it from the inside in order to build a concrete structure in its place, and when this was noticed the building was expropriated in 1976. Its repair was completed in 1979 and in 1984 it was opened to visitors as a museum house. That houses sometimes passed into public hands and became museums, and sometimes stayed in private ownership and acquired a new function, shows that two different paths of conservation have run side by side in Yalıboyu.

The lodging function became visible after the city was divided into seven urban conservation areas in 1979 and the registration decisions that followed. A sector report published in 2012 states that the Yalıboyu houses and Hatuniye Quarter, where they stand, had been brought into tourism through their lodging and entertainment facilities. The architect who spoke in 2021 likewise said that the value of the Yalıboyu houses in Hatuniye had risen sharply for tourism over the previous decade, that because few mansions had survived the growing demand of domestic and foreign tourists could not be met, and that this had pushed prices up. This observation also explains why mansion hotels are not a crowded sector: supply is limited by the number of historic buildings.

Conservation Law and Change of Use

The Yalıboyu houses are protected under Law No. 2863 on the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Property. On 5 May 1992 the Ankara Conservation Board for Cultural and Natural Property classified the buildings as civil or monumental and provided for the continued registration of 126 civil buildings. Today Amasya falls within the jurisdiction of the Samsun Regional Conservation Board for Cultural Property; the survey, restitution and restoration project that the architecture department of Amasya University prepared for a mansion in Hatuniye was submitted to that board. For anyone who wants to turn a mansion into a hotel, this board is both the first obstacle and the first authority to be addressed.

Article 9 of the law is explicit on this point. Contrary to the decisions of the regional conservation boards, no constructional or physical intervention may be made in registered buildings and protected sites; they may not be reopened to use or have their use changed. Major repair, construction, installation work, demolition and excavation count as intervention. Every operation undertaken for lodging purposes, that is, opening bathrooms in rooms, running services, installing heating or adding a section to the courtyard, is therefore subject to the board's approval within this framework. Changing the function of a dwelling also passes through the board. In the sample project Amasya University prepared for a two-storey mansion and selamlık building in Hatuniye, because the owner would continue to use the building, it was decided that the registered building would continue as a residence and consolidation measures were taken as the basis. The example shows that not every registered mansion needs to be turned into a hotel, and that function is determined at project level according to the owner's purpose and the board's approval.

The relevant articles of the law also lay down the procedure for work on a registered building. Article 18 provides that the grouping of immovable cultural property in need of protection is carried out by the regional conservation board within three months of the owner's application, and that repair and construction principles cannot be set until the grouping has been made. A restorer architect or an architect is mandatory in the preparation and implementation of survey, restoration and restitution projects. In the implementation of buildings in the first group, persons specialised in decorative painting, woodwork, ironwork and stonework are employed according to the character of the building. Those responsible for work outside the approved project are barred for five years from taking responsibility for plans, projects and implementation involving the conservation boards. These provisions are the legal basis on which woodwork, painted decoration and lattice facades cannot be removed from a registered mansion in the name of comfort.

The burden rests mainly on the owner. Under Article 10 of the law, the protection and use of immovable cultural property owned by private persons is ensured by the owners themselves. Article 11 treats owners as entitled to the rights and exemptions the law grants them as long as they carry out maintenance and repair in accordance with the orders and instructions of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and it also provides that the properties of those unable to meet their maintenance and repair obligations will be expropriated by due process. The expropriation of Hazeranlar Mansion in 1976 is described in the sources as having followed the secret start of its demolition from the inside; it is the best-known case of transfer to public ownership in Yalıboyu. For those who wish to use a building as public property, Article 14 makes the transfer of the usufruct of protected buildings for public service, or their lease to natural and legal persons, subject to the Ministry's permission, and whoever uses the building is obliged to bear the costs of maintenance, repair and restoration.

The law also contains partial support for owners. Article 12 says that the Ministry provides in-kind, cash and technical assistance for the protection, maintenance and repair of protected buildings owned by private persons. For the protection of cultural property within the remit of municipalities and special provincial administrations, a contribution levy of ten per cent of the property tax is assessed, collected in a special account within the special provincial administration and used for expropriation, project design and implementation work. The same article also provides that at least ten per cent of the loans granted under the Mass Housing Law are to be made available for applications concerning the maintenance, repair and restoration of registered immovable cultural property. The sources examined contain no consolidated record of which Amasya mansions received this support, or in what proportion.

In Yalıboyu the organisational side of conservation is also a precondition of lodging. The 1979 decision of the High Council for Immovable Antiquities and Monuments divided the city into seven urban conservation areas, designated the zone in which Yalıboyu lies as Area No. 2 and halted development activity other than minor repairs until a conservation plan was prepared. In 1981 the board adopted transitional-period conservation plan decisions and placed limits on storey height and facade openings for the Yalıboyu houses. In 1994, when local government and civil initiative came together, the Yalıboyu Houses Conservation Project (YABEP) began and eighty houses were registered. In 1996 the Amasya Foundation for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Property (AKTAV) was founded as an extension of the project. In addition, Law No. 5366 of 2005 provides that deteriorated areas registered and declared conservation sites by the conservation boards be declared renewal areas and rebuilt and restored, and that housing, commerce, culture, tourism and social-facility zones be created there. The sources at hand contain no record of this law being applied in Yalıboyu; the purpose clause of the law does show, however, that a tourism function in historic fabric is provided for in law.

Mansion Hotels Under Tourism Regulation

The permission of the conservation board is not enough to make a building a hotel. The place of the business in tourism legislation is determined separately. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Regulation on the Certification and Qualifications of Tourism Facilities divides lodging facilities into types and classes, and certificates are issued in two stages, as a tourism investment certificate and a tourism operation certificate. If the facility is to be established in a registered cultural property, a document to that effect must also be submitted with the investment certificate application. For facilities in registered buildings the regulation also opens a special door: a tourism investment certificate cannot be issued to special facilities and guesthouses that are not located in buildings qualifying as registered cultural property. In other words, the special-facility and guesthouse categories are in practice tied to registered buildings as far as the investment certificate is concerned.

The regulation's definition of a special facility suits lodging in historic buildings. A special facility must be in a building, or an area, that has at least one of the following characteristics: architectural originality, historic value, a natural feature, artistic value, a structure or decoration reflecting local or other cultures, or construction and decoration in superior-quality materials; its management is expected to have an established reputation or to reflect cultures. Experienced or trained staff must be available in a number sufficient to serve at least twenty per cent of the total bed capacity. The 2018 amendment also provides that stand-alone food and beverage facilities cannot be certified as special facilities. A boutique hotel, by contrast, is defined as a hotel of at least ten and at most sixty rooms that is original in its structural features, architectural design, furnishing, decoration and materials; its rooms are required to have the qualities set for five-star hotel rooms, and a lobby and seating area adequate for the capacity are required.

There is an interesting distance between these definitions and the actual situation in Yalıboyu. The Yalıboyu houses are one- or two-storey buildings on a basement, in attached rows on narrow plots; to provide ten to sixty rooms, five-star room qualities and an adequate lobby inside a single mansion will often be difficult. In the list of Ministry-certified facilities published by the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, of thirty-four entries four appear as special lodging facilities, one as a boutique hotel and seven as guesthouses; the rest are starred or unstarred hotels. In the list of municipality-certified lodging facilities, most of forty-two entries come under the headings of hotel and guesthouse, and only one is a special lodging facility. Entries with a Hatuniye Quarter address make up roughly half of the total in both lists, and most of these facilities are small, ranging from one or two rooms to twenty-three. This picture suggests that small mansions are run either as guesthouses or as municipality-certified lodging; but we have no source showing why each mansion chose the certificate it did, so this reading is an inference, not a recorded finding.

The type of certificate also determines the standard of service a guest will meet. Facilities certified by the Ministry are subject to the minimum qualities of the regulation and are assessed by a classification commission; municipality-certified facilities are certified under simpler lodging criteria. A person thinking of staying in a mansion can find out the standard of service on offer by checking which certificate the facility operates under.

The Lodging Supply in Amasya

The earliest comprehensive data for judging the weight of mansion hotels in Amasya tourism is the sector report published in 2012. According to the report, in 2011 the Amasya city centre had twelve tourism-operation-certified and twenty-nine municipality-certified lodging facilities; in the districts the number of tourism-operation-certified facilities was three. The total room count of Ministry-certified facilities in the centre was 306 and the bed capacity 633; with the districts included it rose to 853, and with the municipality-certified facilities across the province added, to 2,162. Of the income of the enterprises taking part in the report's survey, seventy-five per cent in 2011 came from domestic tourists, and the report noted that lodging businesses in particular had been on the increase in recent years.

The lists published on the pages of the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism cannot be compared one-to-one with the 2011 figure, since they also cover the districts; even so, the two lists together reach seventy-six entries. Addresses such as Hazeranlar Street, Hacı Tevfik Hafız Street, Yalı Street, Derya Street and Fığani Street appear often in Hatuniye Quarter and its surroundings. Because the date of preparation of the lists is not stated on the page and some entries are repeated or have changed their names, a precise total is not possible. What matters is that the lodging area of Yalıboyu has grown along two axes: some registered mansions have become businesses in their own right, while some businesses have grown by acquiring surrounding buildings or adding new ones.

One example of this growth is a mansion on Hazeranlar Street. According to the account, a man from Amasya born in 1904 bought in 1946 a mansion about two hundred years old; arranged as a haremlik and selamlık, it has four rooms in the haremlik and one in the selamlık, with a water cistern beneath the selamlık. One of his grandchildren repaired the mansion and added eleven buildings around it, creating the present guesthouse arrangement. The details of this account have not been confirmed by independent documents, but it contains the typical story of how a family mansion can become a business. Continued family ownership means that the business's need for upkeep and the duty of conservation meet in the same hands.

Adapting the Houses to Lodging

Most of the problems met in turning a mansion into a hotel room come from the gap between the traditional way of life of the house and present-day lodging expectations. The rooms of the Yalıboyu houses were not assigned to a particular function. The same room was used in the course of the day for sitting, eating and sleeping, the bedding was put away in the cupboards, and the sedir served both as seat and as place to lie down. Compared with a fixed bedroom arrangement in today's sense, this multi-purpose layout is both an advantage and a limitation: the number of rooms and beds depends on how the space is furnished.

The bathroom problem comes first. Most of the houses have no separate bathroom; part of the large wall cupboards in the rooms was arranged as a washing place, and the small compartment inside the cupboard served for both ablution and bathing. The wish to add a bathroom to every room is therefore the point at which the historic plan is most strained. That the east iwan of Hazeranlar Mansion is given over to wet spaces shows that even in the traditional plan such sections existed. In the account of the guesthouse mentioned above, too, the bathrooms are said to be inside the cupboard stores. The situation of each mansion varies with the building and depends on the board's decision.

Heating is a similar matter. In the mansion, embers of the wood burned in the room's hearth were put into a copper brazier and brought into the room, or the room was heated with a ceramic European stove. Life moving to the courtyard in summer, when temperatures in Amasya reach forty degrees, and to rooms with stoves and hearths in winter determines the seasonal use of the house. For a guesthouse to operate all year round, heating and cooling must be provided by modern means, yet the timber frame, mud-brick infill and lattice facade make it difficult to conceal such installations from view. Every item added to a facade or roof is under the control of the conservation board; in its 1981 decision the board placed limits on storey height and facade openings for the Yalıboyu houses.

Another dimension of reuse is the division between haremlik and selamlık. The haremlik was a wholly private area, while the selamlık was the part nearer the street where male guests were received. That Hazeranlar Mansion has two main entrances, opening separately to the selamlık and the haremlik, shows how this division was embodied in the plan. Whether, when a mansion is turned into a hotel, the two parts are used for separate functions is not documented in the sources examined.

Ownership, Privacy and Visiting

Most of the Yalıboyu houses are privately owned. Some dwellings are still used by families, and some mansions have been restored and turned into boutique hotels, cafes and restaurants. This variety calls for separate rules on visitor behaviour in the quarter. The houses can be viewed only from outside, and interiors should not be entered. Mansions run as hotels or restaurants can be entered as a customer, but not for sightseeing without permission. In private residences the privacy of the owners is respected. Law No. 2863 also keeps this balance in view: owners are obliged to allow experts appointed by the Ministry to inspect and study the property, make its survey drawings and photograph it, but the officials work in a way that does not violate the inviolability of the home and family privacy.

Hazeranlar Mansion has a different status. It is reported to have been closed to visitors from 11 November 2024 because of repair and display-arrangement work on the museum house. Whether a mansion can be visited therefore depends both on the type of business and on its current state. For those who wish to see Yalıboyu as a whole, the best vantage is the walkway on the south bank of the river; many of the lodging facilities lie opposite this line, on the north bank.

Open Points

The limits of the documented data should also be stated. The sources examined contain no official, current count of how many Yalıboyu houses are used as hotels, guesthouses or lodges. The lists of the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism give address and type information, but do not say whether an entry is in a registered mansion or in a newly built or mansion-style building. No independent statistics have been found on occupancy rates, guest numbers or seasonal distribution of mansion hotels. It is said that the city is mentioned in connection with the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, but this has not been confirmed by an official document. Within this framework, what is said about the share of mansion hotels in Amasya tourism consists mostly of general inferences based on the 2011 data of the sector report and on the current lists of the provincial directorate.

Chronology

1865: Hazeranlar Mansion was built for Hasan Talat Efendi, treasurer to Ziya Pasha, the mutasarrıf of Amasya (according to some accounts the construction ran from 1864 to 1872).

1939: The Erzincan earthquake damaged the city; Hazeranlar Mansion was also affected.

1968: Hazeranlar Mansion was sold and its new owners began to demolish it.

1976: Hazeranlar Mansion was expropriated; repair work began.

1979: The city was divided into seven urban conservation areas; the Yalıboyu houses were designated Area No. 2.

1981: The Transitional-Period Conservation Plan Decisions for the Historic Urban Conservation Areas of Amasya were adopted.

1984: Hazeranlar Mansion opened to visitors as a museum house.

5 May 1992: By decision of the Ankara Conservation Board for Cultural and Natural Property, the Yalıboyu houses were registered as civil buildings.

1994: The Yalıboyu Houses Conservation Project (YABEP) began; eighty houses were registered.

1996: AKTAV was founded.

2005: The Regulation on the Certification and Qualifications of Tourism Facilities entered into force; Law No. 5366 was adopted (16 June 2005).

2011: The Amasya city centre had twelve tourism-operation-certified and twenty-nine municipality-certified lodging facilities.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Karacalı, Atlıhan Onat. "Amasya Yalıboyu Evlerinin Mimari Özellikleri Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme ve Bir Öneri." Uluslararası Disiplinlerarası ve Kültürlerarası Sanat Dergisi (IJIIA), 2021, vol. 6, no. 13, pp. 15-25. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ijiia/article/1056726

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources