Gaziantep in 2 days: food and bazaars

In Gaziantep the day starts at the table, and the table is laid early. Beyran is a labour-intensive hot soup of meat and rice, traditionally eaten at breakfast. For a sweeter start there is katmer: paper-thin dough folded around clotted cream, ground pistachios and sugar, cut while still hot. To try both, have one today and the other tomorrow. Breakfast places fill early and some counters run out before noon, which is why this plan starts early.

The castle crowns the hill at the heart of the old city and works as your compass for both days: the kitchen and bathhouse museums are in the lane just south, the bazaars and caravanserais at its foot. It is currently closed for restoration, so the plan does not go inside; a short loop around the walls from outside is enough to get your bearings. From here the day runs downhill into the bazaars.

This museum is the plan's introductory lesson. In a stone mansion south of the castle, Gaziantep's kitchen tools, half-forgotten dishes and customs are told through staged scenes: winter nights around the tandır, the festive-morning yuvalama, the coffee ritual. Seeing the work behind the beyran, lahmacun and baklava you will eat over two days makes every later bite mean more. On the way out a small corner sells spices and copperware.

A few doors down the same lane from the kitchen museum. Set in an old bathhouse, it tells the place of the hamam in everyday Antep life. Seen together with the kitchen museum it shows two halves of the city's domestic life side by side: its table and its bath. If you are short of time, skip it and head straight down to the bazaars; the plan works without it.

You hear the Coppersmiths' Bazaar before you see it: craftsmen still hammer out pans, coffee pots and trays at their benches. Watching copper being worked in front of the shops along the narrow lane is the liveliest sign that the city's crafts are still alive. Right next door the covered bazaars, Zincirli, Hüseyin Paşa and Kemikli, run into one another in a row; their domed shops sell spices, strings of dried peppers and aubergines, soap and pistachios. If you would rather shop at the end of day two, just browse today and take your time.

Uzun Çarşı, below the castle, is the right place for lunch. After lahmacun or pide, step into its two caravanserais. Gümrük Han was restored and reopened as a living museum and crafts centre; walk its courtyard and look into the workshops. Millet Han is a large 16th-century caravanserai whose rooms now house craftsmen keeping half-forgotten Antep crafts alive. Together they read like an open book on Antep's past on the trade routes.

End the day slowly with a cup in a historic coffee house. Menengiç coffee is not made from coffee beans but from roasted menengiç, the wild pistachio or terebinth berry, and it is one of Gaziantep's registered products. Shake off the bazaars here and choose your baklava shop for the evening. Classic Turkish coffee gets the same care if you prefer it; Türkiye's official tourism portal describes the place as one locals use too.

Mosaics rescued from ancient Zeugma are displayed together in this museum. Floors filled with myths and figures cover huge halls, and from the upper gallery you feel you are walking through a Roman house. Two pieces highlighted by the provincial culture and tourism directorate are the Gypsy Girl mosaic and a stele of a child holding Antep pistachios; do not miss either. This is not a museum to rush; the size of the collection, and the chance to see the halls before the crowds, is why the plan gives it the whole morning.

This museum fills in the region's wider archaeological past behind the story Zeugma tells in mosaics. The official tourism portal's 48-hour route puts both museums in the same morning, and the order makes sense: first one city's splendid floors, then the long settlement history of the region around it. After the busier mosaic museum it is calmer; an hour is enough to put the morning in context.

This large building in Tepebaşı was built as a church at the end of the 19th century, served for a time as a prison and is now one of the city's biggest mosques. Its layered life as church, prison and mosque recalls the centuries when the city's communities lived side by side. The official tourism portal's 48-hour route also recommends it for the city's architecture. A short visit is enough; take a moment to look at the façade from the square in the afternoon light.

After the Kurtuluş Mosque, stroll over to Bey Mahallesi. Stone houses with courtyards, arched doorways and narrow, shaded lanes are the easiest way to see the city's old housing up close. Türkiye's official tourism portal recommends it not for one building but for wandering its streets. Rather than following a plan, enjoy getting a little lost: glance through an open door into a courtyard, buy a fresh simit from a corner bakery and watch the afternoon light warm the stone.

Keep the last hour for things to take home. Now is the time to buy the strings of dried peppers and aubergines you saw in the bedestens on day one, along with chilli flakes, zahter, bulgur and of course Antep pistachios. When you have baklava boxed for the journey, ask for it to be sealed well so the syrup does not leak. For dinner, try one of the city's seasonal kebabs: made with aubergine, onion or garlic depending on the season, they are a side of the Gaziantep table found nowhere else.