A marble public fountain in the town centre, standing in the shade of the plane trees. It is the latest in date of Söğüt's sights: it belongs not to the founding period but to the last years of the Ottoman state.
Who built it, and when?
The fountain was built in 1919 by the district governor Sait Bey. The date matters: that a district governor should commission a fountain in what can be counted the empire's final year, in a town just out of war, says something about daily life carrying on.
It is in the Neo-Classical manner and counts as an important example of the last phase of Ottoman architecture. That manner is a re-reading of classical Ottoman forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — so the fountain looks old without being old.
What is it like?
The fountain has four faces; it stands free and can be approached from every side. At the centre of three of its sides are basins in the form of fluted vases, with gilded relief motifs to either side of them.
The faces and their pointed arches are set as niches; the inside and head of each niche are faced with coloured tiles. The materials are Kütahya tile and marble — the contrast of blue-turquoise tile against white marble is the building's most striking quality.
Tiles have come away in places. It shows plainly in the photographs: the fountain stands, but its surface is waiting for repair.
Why it is worth seeing
Söğüt's other stops speak of the founding period. This fountain is another layer: it stands for the same town six hundred years later, at the empire's close. To walk from the tomb to the fountain is to cross the whole history in between.
It is in the centre, among the tea gardens and the plane trees; no separate journey is needed — you come upon it as you walk.
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