Yürüyen Mansion

The mansion was built by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, in 1929. One day, when Atatürk arrived at the farm, he saw a gardener trying to cut the branches of the plane tree adjacent to the mansion. The gardener explained that the branches were too long and pressed against the walls of the mansion. Upon hearing this, Atatürk gave the command, "Don’t cut the tree, move the building." A technical team first dug the ground to reach the foundation, then placed the mansion on rails and moved it 4.80 meters away from the tree on August 10th, 1930. Thus, the great plane tree was saved from being cut down. Since that day, the mansion has been known as "The Walking Mansion" (Yürüyen Köşk). Atatürk stayed at the mansion intermittently between 1930 and 1937. In a study conducted in 2015, it was found that the plane tree belongs to the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) family and is approximately 400 years old.