Bağlar ("Vineyards") is the upper residential district of Safranbolu, where the wealthier Ottoman families built their summer mansions on a plateau above the valley floor. The houses here are larger and more spread out than in the crowded old bazaar neighbourhood, set among gardens and orchards, with many still inhabited as private homes rather than converted into hotels or museums.
Walking through Bağlar gives a different perspective on Safranbolu's architecture: the domestic scale, the relationship between houses and their gardens, the wooden oriel windows projecting over the lane below. Some of the finest carpenters' work in the region is in Bağlar mansions that remain in family ownership and are not publicly accessible, but the exteriors alone repay the walk. The neighbourhood connects to the bazaar by a steep path down through the residential hillside.