Bursa held the Ottoman throne for seventy-three years before Constantinople fell, and the weight of that first capital lingers in every mosque courtyard and every twist of the Koza Han silk arcade. Orhan Gazi chose the site in 1326 for its thermal springs and strategic position at the base of Uludağ, the mountain the Byzantines called Olympos of Mysia. The city became a laboratory for imperial architecture: Yeşil Camii, completed in 1424, introduced the Persian tile work and asymmetric interior that would define Ottoman sacred space for the next two centuries. Its mihrab holds more than fifteen thousand hexagonal tiles, each hand-cut in Iznik kilns. Today Bursa moves between its industrial present and its curated past with little friction. The Setbaşı district preserves timber-frame houses from the seventeenth century, their upper stories cantilevered over cobbled lanes too narrow for cars. Koza Han, the silk cocoon market built in 1491, still trades raw thread beneath its octagonal fountain, though most stalls now serve tea to tour groups. The Grand Mosque—Ulu Cami—anchors the old quarter with twenty domes and a forest of calligraphic panels; Sultan Bayezid I commissioned it in 1396 as thanks for his victory at Nicopolis. The fountain inside the prayer hall is functional, not decorative: ablutions occur within the sacred perimeter, a design choice abandoned in later centuries. Uludağ rises 2,543 meters behind the city, accessible by the longest gondola lift in Turkey. The cable car replaced the narrow mountain road in 1963 and cut the ascent from ninety minutes to twenty-two. Winter brings skiers; summer brings hikers and families escaping coastal heat. The upper station sits at 1,810 meters, high enough that pine gives way to alpine meadow. On clear days the view extends across the Marmara basin to the faint silhouette of Istanbul, 150 kilometers northwest. Most Bursa tour from Istanbul itineraries pair the historical core with the mountain transit, compressing five centuries of architecture and a vertical kilometer into a single departure. The logistics favor early starts: ferries from Yenikapi or Pendik cross the Sea of Marmara in ninety minutes, bypassing the congested coastal highway. Guides prioritize the Green Tomb—Yeşil Türbe—where Mehmed I rests beneath faience that has survived six earthquakes, and the bazaar quarter where silk merchants have operated under the same vaulted arcades since the Bursa protocol regulated thread weight in 1502.