Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (64 page)

On the opposite side of the avenue from the Lycée, a short distance before the square, we find a famous institution of quite another sort. One might easily pass it by, for it is just a little alley that leads off to the right from Istiklal Caddesi. This is the famous Çiçek Pasaj
ı
, the Passage of Flowers. The Passage goes through an edifice known as the Cité de Pera, a rococo structure erected in 1876 with a line of shops on the ground floor and luxury apartments above; notice the two splendid entrance portals, one on the main avenue and one on the side street. The Pasaj is lined with meyhanes, old-fashioned taverns where one can enjoy a tasty snack washed down with draft beer or rak
ı
, the anise-flavoured intellect-deadenings national drink. At its inner end the Pasai opens into
Ş
ahne
Ş
oka
ğ
ı
, a street that leads from Istiklal Caddesi down through the Galatasaray Fish Market, one of the most colourful street-markets in the city.

Returning to Istiklal, we now turn off to the right at Galatasaray Meydan
ı
and at the end of the first block we turn left on Me
ş
rutiye Caddesi, passing on our right the old British Embassy. This is a handsome building in the Italian Renaissance style. It was originally designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament. But it was completed in 1845 by W. S. Smith along somewhat different lines. At the rear of the Embassy there is a magnificent and very English garden.

We continue along Me
ş
rutiye Caddesi, which at the next corner turns half-left to bring us to the neighbourhood known as Tepeba
ş
ı
(Top of the Hill), where we have a sweeping view out over the Golden Horn to the old city. Along the crescent-shaped avenue we pass in turn two of the city’s oldest hotels, both of them handsome neoclassical buildings of the late nineteenth century, first the Büyük Londra and then the Bristol. The Bristol Hotel has been superbly restored and is now the Pera Museum, celebrated for its collection of Orientalist paintings and other works of art. At the far end of the crescent we see on the right side of the avenue the famous Pera Palas Hotel, completed in 1893 by the French architect Alexandre Vallaury. The hotel is currently closed for renovation.

We now return to Galatasaray Meydan
ı
and resume our stroll down the avenue. At the first corner on the right we see the Hacopulo Pasaj
ı
, a narrow alleyway that opens into a picturesque arcade surrounded by buildings of the mid-nineteenth century. Off the left side of the arcade we see the Greek church of the Presentation of the Virgin, dedicated in 1807 and rebuilt in 1855.

Returning to Istiklal, we turn right at the next corner into another little alleyway, Olivio Pasaj
ı
, which at its end brings us to the famous Rejans Lokantas
ı
. This is a Russian restaurant founded in the 1930s, famous for its borsch, chicken kievsky and lemon-flavoured vodka.

On the left side of the avenue we see a handsome Catholic church at the back of a large courtyard. This is the Franciscan church of St. Anthony of Padua, the largest Catholic church in the city. It was established on this site in 1725; the present building, a good example of Italian neo-Gothic in red brick, was designed by the architect Giulio Mongeri and completed in 1912. The impressive Art Nouveau building to the left of the church, the M
ı
s
ı
r Apartman, or Egyptian Apartment, was built in 1910 for Abbas Halim Pasha of Egypt.

St. Anthony’s is one of the churches that was built along the old Grand Rue de Pera along with the embassies of the European powers. The embassies in this part of old Pera, on or near the Grand Rue, belong to those powers which have had legations here since the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire. Though most of these buildings are relatively modern, the embassies themselves, especially those of Venice, France, England, Holland, Sweden and Russia, are of some historical interest. They were established more or less where they are now in the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, generally by grants of land bestowed by the sultans, and each formed the centre of its “Nation”, as it was called, that is, of the community of resident merchants and officials of the various countries. These embassies came to play a greater and greater role in the destiny of the Ottoman Empire as its powers declined, and collectively they dominated the life of Pera until the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Near the embassies, various churches were established, more or less under their protection, and some of these survive in a modern form.

Taking the second turning on the left after St. Anthony’s, we see on the right the Maison de France; it is situated in a fine French garden with views of the Bosphorus and the Marmara. Though one of the earliest embassies to be established in Pera towards the end of the sixteenth century, the present building dates only from soon after the fire of 1831. (It was on this site that the great Turkish astronomer, Takiuddin, built his observatory in the 1570s.)

The chapel connected with the embassy, that of St. Louis of the French, is the oldest in foundation of the Latin Churches in Pera, dating from 1581; though the present structure dates only from about 1831. Among the masses celebrated there every Sunday is one in the Chaldean rite. St. Louis is the local house of worship for the Chaldean Church, an eighteenth-century offshoot of the ancient Nestorian Church which is now in union with Rome. The members of this Church in Istanbul are all from the Hakkari section in the far south-east of Turkey and are descendants of the ancient Chaldean and Assyrian peoples; parts of the mass are still sung in Aramaic, the language which Christ would have spoken.

Continuing along Istiklal Caddesi on the same side of the street we come next to the Dutch Embassy, a very pretty building looking rather like a small French chateau. The present building was designed by the Fossati brothers and completed in 1855; the lower structure, visible from the garden, goes back two centuries or more in time. The original Embassy, built in 1612, was burned twice, but parts of the substructure of the earlier buildings were preserved and incorporated into the present Embassy.

The first turning on the left beyond the Embassy brings us to the Dutch Chapel, whose entrance is a short way down along the left. Since 1857 this building has housed the Union Church of Istanbul, an English-speaking congregation from many lands. The chapel dates from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, although the original chapel must go back to the founding of the Dutch Embassy. The basement rooms of the chapel, now used as a Sunday school, have in the past served as a prison. The building is basically a single massive barrel vault of heavy masonry; the brickwork of the façade, newly exposed to view, is especially fine.

A frequent visitor to the original Dutch Chapel in the early years of its existence was Cyril Lucaris, six times Patriarch of Constantinople and once of Alexandria. Influenced by his conversations with theologians connected with the Dutch Chapel, Lucaris in 1629 published his
Declaration of Faith
, in which he proclaimed his belief in the basic principles of Calvinism. This caused a scandal in the Greek Orthodox Church which eventually led to the Patriarch being denounced to Murat IV as a Russian spy. On 25 June 1638, Lucaris was executed by the Janissaries and his body thrown into the Marmara, thus bringing to an end the remarkable career of the man whom Pope Urban had called “the son of darkness and the athlete of hell.”

A little farther down the street we pass on our right the former Spanish Embassy, now no longer functioning, with only the embassy chapel remaining in use. This chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, was originally founded in 1670; the present church dates from 1871.

Still farther down the street we come to the handsome Palazzo di Venezia, now the Italian Embassy. The present building dates from about 1695, though the Embassy itself was established here long before that. In the great old days this was the residence of the Venetian bailo, the ambassador of the Serene Republic of Venice and one of the most powerful of the foreign legates in the city. The Palazzo is large and imposing, its garden as typically Italian as that of the English Embassy is English. We learn from his
Memoirs
that Giacomo Casanova was a guest here in the summer of 1744; in his three months in the city this great lover made not a single conquest and was himself seduced by one Ismail Efendi.

Returning to Istiklal Caddesi we come next to the Franciscan church of St. Mary Draperis, down a flight of steps from the street level. The first church on this site was built in 1678 and the present structure dates from 1789. The parish itself, however, is a very ancient one, dating to the beginning of the year 1453 when the Franciscans built a church near the present site of Sirkeci Station. After the Conquest the Franciscans were forced to leave Constantinople, settling first in Galata and then later here in Pera. The Franciscans still preserve a miraculous icon of the Virgin which they claim to have taken with them from their first church in Constantinople.

Just past the church we come to the Russian Embassy; this was built in 1837 by the Fossati brothers who, a decade later, were to restore Haghia Sophia. The Fossati brothers had been for several years in Moscow as official architects to the Tsar, who sent them to Istanbul to build his new embassy; here they remained for 20 years or so as official architects to the Sultan.

Down a steep street to the left beyond the Russian Embassy and around a corner to the left we come to the Crimean Memorial Church, by far the largest and most handsome of the few Protestant churches in the city. This was built between 1858 and 1868 under the aegis of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and was designed by C.E. Street, the architect of the London Law Courts. It is a very Streetian Gothic building with a cavernous porch, like the Law Courts themselves.

Returning once again to Istiklal Caddesi, we come next to the last of the old embassies on the avenue. This is the Embassy of Sweden, which was established here towards the end of the seventeenth century. Directly across the street from the Swedish Embassy is the Narmanl
ı
Han, a huge old building which housed the Russian Embassy till they moved to their new quarters down the street in 1837. This building, which appears to date from the early eighteenth century, is now a congeries of shops, storerooms, offices and ateliers.

We are now at the end of Istiklal Caddesi. Just ahead, where the avenue forks to the right, is the entrance to Tünel, the underground funicular railway which in one minute and 20 seconds takes one to the bottom of the hill near the Galata Bridge. Tünel was built in 1875 and is thus one of the oldest subways in Europe and probably also the shortest; Periotes used to refer to it affectionately as “The Mouses Hole”.

GALATA MEVLEV
İ
TEKKE

Rather than taking Tünel, we will stroll down the steep street called Galip Dede Caddesi. Up until recent years this was a step street, like so many others in Galata, but now it has been paved in the interest of the automobile. A short way down this street on the left side we see a sebil founded in 1819 by one Halet Efendi. Just beside the sebil we come to the gateway of the Galata Mevlevi Tekke.

Entering, we find ourselves in a large and pleasant courtyard in front of the tekke with a garden on the right side and a picturesque graveyard on the other. The tekke was founded in 1491 by
Ş
eyh Muhammed Semai Sultan Divan
ı
, a descendant of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the great divine and mystic poet who in the thirteenth century founded the religious brotherhood known as the Mevlevi, famous in the West as the “Whirling Dervishes”. The most famous
ş
eyh of the Galata tekke was the seventeenth-century poet Galip Dede, whose ornate türbe is on the left of the path leading into the courtyard.

At the rear of the courtyard we come to the heart of the tekke, the semahane, or dancing room, a beautiful octagonal chamber that was splendidly restored in the early 1970s. The semahane and its adjacent chamber now house the Divan Edibiyat
ı
Museum of Turkish Court Poetry, a form inspired by the mystical verses of Mevlana. The collection includes manuscripts of the works of Galip Dede and other poets, as well as examples of Ottoman calligraphy and memorabilia of the Mevlevi dervishes who lived here until the mid-1920s, when all of the dervish orders in Turkey were banned and their tekkes closed. Performances of the ethereal Mevlevi dance and the hauntingly beautiful music that accompanies it are occasionally performed in the tekke.

The graveyard beside the tekke has some very interesting old tombstones, most of them in the form of the characteristic truncated conical headdresses of the Mevlevi. One of these marks the grave of the famous Count Bonneval, known in Turkish as Kumbarac
ı
Ahmet Pa
ş
a. Bonneval was a French officer who enrolled in the Ottoman army in the reign of Sultan Mahmut I (r. 1730–54) and was made Commandant of the Corps of Artillery. He became a Muslim, changed his name to Kumbarac
ı
(the Bombardier) Osman Ahmet, and spent the remainder of his life in the Ottoman service, dying in Istanbul in 1747. A contemporary of Bonneval wrote of him that he was “a man of great talent for war, intelligent, eloquent with turn and grace, very proud, a lavish spender, extremely debauched and a great plunderer.”

THE GALATA TOWER

We now continue on down Galip Dede Caddesi for about 250 metres until we see on our right the huge Galata Tower. This tower was the apex of the Genoese fortifications of medieval Galata. Originally known as the Tower of Christ, it was built in 1348 in connection with the first expansion of the Genoese colony. The first fortified area, built as early as 1304, was a long narrow rectangle along the Golden Horn between where the two bridges now stand. In order to defend themselves more adequately on the side of the heights above Galata, the Genoese then added a triangular wedge with the Tower of Christ at its highest point. Later still, in 1387 and 1397, they took in successive areas to the north-west, and finally in 1446 they enclosed the eastern slope of the hill leading down to the Bosphorus. The final defence system consisted of six walled encientes, with the outer wall bordered by a moat, a short stretch of which can still be seen beside the Tower. Bits and pieces of the defence walls and towers still exist here and there around Galata, but none of them amounts to very much. The Galata Tower has been restored and there is now a modern restaurant and café on its upper levels. From the observation deck on the uppermost level one has a magnificent view out over the entire city and its surrounding waters.