Merinos Parkı

Merinos Park is an urban park laid out on the grounds of the Sümerbank Merinos Wool Factory, one of the first large industrial investments of the Republic. According to Wikipedia it is Bursa's second largest city park, with an area of 252,500 square metres, and it is run by the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality. Inside the park are two industrial museums, a congress and culture centre and the buildings left from the factory. In other words this is not just a green space but an open-air exhibition of Bursa's industrial history. From factory to park Sümerbank gave the wool mill it planned for Bursa the name "Merinos", meaning fine, long wool. The foundation was laid on 28 November 1935 by the prime minister of the day, İsmet İnönü, and the minister of economy, Celal Bayar. The construction was carried out by Nuri Demirağ. The factory was opened by Atatürk on 2 February 1938, and instead of a ribbon being cut, the door was opened with a golden key. This was Atatürk's seventeenth and last visit to Bursa. The plant initially spun yarn with 16,140 spinning and 7,000 twisting spindles, and at the time it was counted among the most advanced textile works in the Balkans and the Middle East. According to the Bursa Museums Directorate, the factory employed a total of 17,500 people until its closure and became one of the main enterprises of the Bursa economy after the 1960s. Production stopped in 2004 and the land was transferred to the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality. Through an urban renewal project carried out between 2006 and 2008, the municipality turned the site into a park and the factory buildings into culture and museum buildings. What is in the park The park holds about 2,500 trees and 11,600 plants of 81 species, an artificial pond and ornamental pools. The walking path is 2 kilometres long, the running track 3 and the cycling path 5. Children's playgrounds and a social facility run by the municipality are also inside the park. The factory's former production buildings became part of the Merinos Atatürk Congress and Culture Centre through the 2006-2008 restoration. The centre opened on 6 June 2010 and hosts the concerts of the Bursa Regional State Symphony Orchestra. The congress centre itself is not the subject of this entry. As you walk through the park you will recognise it as the large complex joining the brick-faced old factory blocks with the new halls. The Textile Industry Museum The Merinos Textile Industry Museum opened on 14 October 2011 in the factory's warehouse and production buildings. The Bursa Museums Directorate presents it as Turkey's first and only museum of the textile industry. Machines that once produced hundreds of thousands of metres of fabric and yarn have been repaired and displayed in place, and the visitor moves along a circulation route with information panels. Four halls follow the production process. From raw wool fibre to yarn, from yarn to weaving, from dyeing and finishing to garment making, each stage has its machine and material samples. The laboratory section holds the instruments used for testing fibre, yarn and cloth. The silk section added in 2013 demonstrates the process from cocoon to thread with a reeling machine and silk looms. Photographs, badges and work clothes kept by the factory's employees tell the human side of the museum. The museum is at the East Gate entrance of the congress centre. It is closed on Mondays, and the entrance and galleries are suitable for wheelchair users. The Energy Museum The Merinos Energy Museum opened on 7 September 2012 in the 3,200-square-metre power plant building that generated the factory's electricity. Four AEG water pumps, two Borsig steam boilers and two Steinmüller boilers dated 1951, all brought from Germany, stand in their original places inside the building. Because the machines are so large, walkways were designed so that visitors can take in the whole. The exhibition tells the history of electricity in Bursa, the lighting devices used before electricity and the stages of energy production with photographs and animations. Thermal plants, dams, solar and wind energy are shown with models. The museum is on the North Gate side of the park, and its official page has for some time announced that it is closed for restoration. Check the current situation on bursamuze.com before you go. The Bursa Migration History Museum, opened in 2014, is on the same site. Getting there and how to visit You enter the park directly from the Merinos station of the BursaRay metro. The Soğanlı shared taxis leaving from in front of the Ulu Camii also stop at Merinos Park. First walk around the pond to take in the scale of the factory blocks, then enter the Textile Industry Museum through the East Gate. For the museums' open days and hours see their pages on bursamuze.com. The park is crowded on weekend afternoons. For a quiet visit choose a weekday morning.