Kızlarağası Inn

Kızlarağası Inn is one of the meeting points of Izmir. The construction of the inn, built by Kızlarağası Hacı Beşir Ağa, started in 1744 and was finished in 1745.

The main front of the inn located in Yemişçiler and Halim Ağa Bazaar at the back of the old harbor castle opens to the Keresteciler Sokağı. Today it is 871 street.

The inn filling an important gap at the time it was built, is one of the rare artworks of ottoman architecture in Izmir. Kızlarağası inn has a square from like other inns. Traditionally there should be a fountain and a pool in the middle of the wide rectangular courtyard of the building.

Today they don’t exist. The inn has two floors like all-long distance inns. People stayed and slept in the upper rooms opening to the gallery while the ground floor was just the opposite of the simple and playing atmosphere of the upper floor. Here were the camels and their loads, the rooms for the merchants and their servants, shops where the goods were unloaded and marketed along with the bargaining people.

Since the inn was closed to the harbor, it was always lively. The inn worked as a somewhat stock market for a period of time and this was intensely practiced especially in the shops facing the inner courtyard.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the effects of technology causing changes in transportation and the moving of economic life from one place to another from time to time Kızlarağası Han has gradually lost its importance.

After the overnights days were abandoned, the inn became a place where only goods are unloaded and stored.

In 1993, General Director of Foundations authentically restored Kızlarağası Inn which now is a tourist bazaar. You can find different handycraft products, handloom carpets and rugs, leather clothes, silver jewellery, handmade soil products, all sort of antiques and different souvenirs such as natural stones,and moreover, you can rest by breathing the mystique air in the tea garden within the courtyard.