Kütahya

Kütahya lies beneath a castle on the western Anatolian plateau, at a meeting place of routes between the Aegean and the interior. Known in antiquity as Cotyaeum, it became the capital of the Germiyanid principality. The town's mosques, tombs and markets preserve the legacy of this powerful dynasty, while the surrounding hills overlook a fertile basin and the roads through it.

In the fourteenth century the Germiyanids ruled a substantial part of western Anatolia from Kütahya. Marriage linked their house to the Ottomans: in 1381 a portion of their lands, including the capital, passed as a dowry, and the future Sultan Bayezid served as governor. The political settlement did not end the dynasty immediately. After further changes of rule, the last Germiyanid ruler Yakub Bey died in 1429 and his lands passed to the Ottomans. Kütahya became an important provincial centre, governing a broad region of towns and rural districts in western Anatolia.

Its potters and tile makers carried a craft tradition into the Ottoman centuries. Kütahya workshops produced glazed vessels and decorated tiles for religious buildings and households; their work joined the town to a wider world of Ottoman craftsmanship. The great mosque, begun during Bayezid's governorship and completed in the fifteenth century, stands among the monuments that connect its Germiyanid and Ottoman histories.