Sustaining functional continuity of historical buildings is a commonly acknowledged conservation strategy and thermal retrofitting interventions applied on these buildings has complemental potentials to this strategy as these interventions can be designed to increase the thermal satisfaction of occupants. The aim of this thesis is to examine the thermal behavior of a common historical building type in Anatolia, the traditional houses with exterior hall, and to determine enhancement potentials of possible thermal interventions which will not cause loss of heritage values. Method of the study consists of on-site thermal measurements and transient thermal analysis of case studies utilizing the software DesignBuilder. Case studies were selected from both urban and rural sub-settlements of Muğla City in order to detect possible effects of prevailing microclimates. With the results obtained, it was demonstrated the retrofitting interventions of thermal insulation works in roofs and floors between storeys, airtightness measures, addition of secondary glazing to window frames and the addition of closed circulation corridors provide significant improvements in thermal performance of the cases. According to simulation analyses, it was specified that these interventions would save 38.0% of the total building energy use in the urban and 49.4% in the rural subsettlements. These improvement percentages can even be increased to more than 80% when the integration of a new HVAC system such as ground-source heat pump is implemented. Consequently, it was determined the traditional houses with exterior hall have significant potentials for thermal enhancements which renders the application of thermal interventions as a capable conservation strategy.