HISTORICAL PLACES IN TURKEY: Part I
1) Kız Kulesi (Maiden Tower)
The Maiden's Tower, is a tower on a small island at the southern entrance of the Bosporus, the strait of Istanbul, 200 meters (220 yd) from the coast of Üsküdar in Istanbul, Turkey.
Historically, there are many legends about the construction of the tower and its location. According to the most famous legend, an emperor had a much beloved daughter and one day, an oracle prophesied that she would be killed by a venomous snake on her 18th birthday. Hearing this, the emperor had a tower built in the middle of the sea to protect his daughter from snakes. The princess was placed in the tower, where she was frequently visited only by her father. On the 18th birthday of the princess, the emperor brought her a basket of exotic sumptuous fruits as a birthday gift, delighted that he was able to prevent the prophecy. Upon reaching into the basket, however, a snake that had been hiding among the fruit bit the young princess and she died in her father's arms, just as the oracle had predicted, hence the name Maiden's Tower.
Today everyone can go to the Tower with ships from both the Asian and European sides of Istanbul. In the tower there is a little museum which expresses the history of the tower and there is a restaurant at the top of the tower.
2) Galata Tower
The Galata Tower, called Christea Turris (the "Tower of Christ" in Latin) by Genoese, northern Italian colony, is a medieval stone tower in the Galata /Karaköy quarter of Istanbul, Turkey. It is a high, cone-capped cylinder that dominates the skyline and offers a panoramic view of Istanbul's historic peninsula and its surrounding areas.
Today, there are 9 floors and there is a restaurant/café on its last floor which has views of Istanbul and the Bosporus. There are two operating elevators that carry visitors from the lower level to the upper levels. Galata Tower was included in World Heritage temporary list in Turkey by UNESCO in 2013.
The Romanesque style tower was first named as the Tower of Christ in 1348 during an expansion of the Genoese colony in Constantinople which replaced an earlier tower that was built in 528 during the Byzantine Empire but had been destroyed during the Crusades. The second Galata Tower was the tallest building in Constantinople when it was built, which is why it was used as an observation tower for fires in the city. The upper section of the tower with the conical cap was slightly modified in several restorations since 1717. In 1794, during the reign of Sultan Selim III when the roof of the tower was made of lead and wood, the stairs were severely damaged by a fire. In 1875, during a storm, the roof was destroyed. The tower remained without this conical roof until the end of the Ottoman Empire. Many years later, during the restoration works between 1965 and 1967, the roof was reconstructed. During this final restoration, the wooden interior of the tower was replaced by a concrete structure and it was commercialized and opened to the public.
For the fact: Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, the first person to fly in the world, made his flight from this tower.
Galata Tower has a legend, moreover, it is so romantic… According to legend, Galata Tower and Maiden's Tower are in love with each other, but the Bosporus between them prevents lovers from meeting. He wrote his love for Galata Tower in letters for years and put his longing for Maiden's Tower into words. When Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi went there to realize his dream of flying, Galata Tower whispered his love for Maiden's Tower in his ear and gave the letters to him. Taking the wind blowing from Istanbul behind him, Hezarfen delivered the letters to the Maiden's Tower. Realizing that her love is not platonic, Maiden's Tower explodes with joy. These two lovers' deep feelings for each other helped them to challenge the centuries and created the most beautiful view of Istanbul. It is believed to this day that if a person is climbing the Galata tower for the first time, that person will marry the person he climbed the tower with.
3) Dolmabahçe Palace
Dolmabahçe Palace is in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Turkey, on the European coast of the Bosporus strait. It served as the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1856 to 1887 and again from 1909 to 1922. Dolmabahçe Palace was ordered to engineers by the Empire's 31st Sultan, Abdulmecid I, and built between the years 1843 and 1856 by Armenian architects. Dolmabahçe is the largest palace in Turkey. It has an area of 45,000 meters (11.1 acres), and contains 285 rooms, 46 halls, 6 baths (hammams) and 68 toilets. The opening ceremony of the Dolmabahçe Palace took place after the Treaty of Paris was signed with the Russian Empire on June 7, 1856.
The palace has been home to six Sultans from 1856, when it was first inhabited, up until the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. A law that went into effect on March 3, 1924 which transferred the ownership of the palace to the national heritage of the new Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey, used the palace as a presidential residence during the summers and enacted some of his most important works there. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk spent the last days of his life in the palace as his health deteriorated. He died on November 10, 1938, in a bedroom located in the former harem area of the palace. All the clocks in the palace were stopped and set to 9:05 after his death. The clocks outside of his room now are set to the actual time in Turkey, but the clock in the room in which he died still points to 9:05.
4) Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia, now the Holy Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and formerly the Church of Hagia Sophia, is an antique place of worship in Istanbul. Built in 537 as the patriarchal cathedral of the imperial capital in Constantinople, it was the largest Christian church of the eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire.
Built by the eastern Roman emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537, the church was then the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". It remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world" and as an architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization. After the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, it was converted to a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror.
Hagia Sophia served as inspiration for many other religious buildings in different places. The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey. According to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Hagia Sophia was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction in 2015 and 2019.
5) Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii)
Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque, is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. Being that it is still a functioning mosque, it attracts large numbers of tourists. It was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes.
The Blue Mosque was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1985 under the name of "Historic Areas of Istanbul".
After the Peace of Zsitvatorok and the crushing loss in the 1603–18 war with Persia, Sultan Ahmed I decided to build this large mosque in Istanbul to reassert Ottoman power. It was the first imperial mosque for more than forty years. The construction started in 1609 and was completed in 1616. The mosque was built on the site of the palace of the Byzantine emperors, in front of the basilica Hagia Sophia (at that time, the primary imperial mosque in Istanbul) and the hippodrome, a site of significant symbolic meaning as it dominated the city skyline from the south.
Built with five main domes, six minarets, and eight secondary domes, the design is the culmination of two centuries of Ottoman mosque development. It incorporates many Byzantine elements of the neighboring Hagia Sophia with traditional Islamic architecture and is the last great mosque of the classical period. The upper area is decorated with approximately 20,000 hand-painted, glazed ceramics in 60 different tulip patterns. The lower stories are illuminated by 200 stained glass windows.