Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (67 page)

On the west side of the wide street in front of K
ı
l
ı
ç Ali Pa
ş
a Camii, at the bottom of the hill coming down from Galatasaray, is a little mosque recently rather well-restored. It is not very interesting except it is ancient and well exemplifies the simple rectangular plan with a hipped wooden roof. It was founded by the Chief Black Eunuch Karaba
ş
Mustafa who died, according to the
Hadika
, in 1530. Long a ruin, it was rebuilt in 1962; the interior is without interest.

TOPHANE

Opposite, on an eminence, is the cannon foundry from which the district takes its name, Tophane. A foundry was established here by Fatih himself and was extended and improved by Beyazit II. However, according to Evliya, Süleyman the Magnificent “pulled down the gun foundry built by his ancestors and built a new one, which no one who has not seen it is able to judge of what may be accomplished by human strength and understanding.” This he did, Evliya explains, because he was constantly at war with the Emperor of Germany: “These Germans are strong, warlike, cunning, devilish, coarse infidels whom, excelling in artillery, Sultan Süleyman endeavoured to equal by assembling gunners and artillerymen by rich presents from all countries,” and by improving the gun foundry. He goes on to give a detailed description of the methods used in casting the cannon. Süleyman’s foundry has long since disappeared and the present structure was built by Selim III in 1803, doubtless in connection with his own attempt to reform and modernize the army. It is a large rectangular building of brick and stone with eight great domes supported by three lofty piers. Beyond the foundry itself, along the height overlooking the street, a series of ruined substructures, walls and domes once formed part of the general complex, which included extensive barracks for the artillerymen. The foundry has now been restored and is open to the public as an exhibition hall. Across the street beside the Nusretiye mosque a small kiosk in the
Empire
style, built by Abdül Aziz, was a review pavilion where the sultan came to inspect his artillery troops.

NUSRET
İ
YE CAM
İ
İ

Nusretiye Camii was built between 1822 and 1826 by Mahmut II, its architect being Kirkor Balyan, the founder of that large family of Armenian architects who served the sultans throughout most of the nineteenth century and built so many of whose mosques and palaces we shall encounter along the shores of the Bosphorus. Kirkor Balyan (1764–1831) had studied in Paris and his mosque shows a curious blend of baroque and
Empire
motifs, highly un- Turkish, but not without a certain charm. This mosque abandons the traditional arrangement of a monumental courtyard and substitutes for it, as it were, an elaborate series of palace-like apartments in two storeys which forms the western façade of the building; such a plan had first been tried some 30 years earlier by Mehmet Tahir for the Hamidiye at Beylerbey, but it became a regular feature of all the Balyan mosques – for example, those at Dolmabahçe, Y
ı
ld
ı
z, Ortaköy and Aksaray. Notice the bulbous weight towers, the dome arches like jutting cheekbones, the over-slender minarets, so thin that they fell down soon after construction and had to be re-erected, the ornate bronze grilles here and there, or look at the interior dripping with marble and
Empire
garlands, and the mimber, a marvellous baroque changeling. The architect may have been perverse but he certainly had verve. The founder, Mahmut II the Reformer, called his mosque Nusretiye, Victory, because it was finished in 1826 just after his triumph over the Janissaries whom he had succeeded in liquidating.

Along the docks between K
ı
l
ı
ç Ali Pa
ş
a Camii and Nusretiye Camii one of the warehouses has been converted into an art museum called Istanbul Modern, which opened in 2004. The collections include outstanding works of Turkish artists of the late Ottoman and early Republic eras, displayed in a very interesting and attractive setting.

Not far beyond Nusretiye Camii, on the heights above, can be seen the dome and minarets of the mosque of Cihangir, which gives its name to this upper district. Unfortunately the present building is of no interest whatever, having been built in 1890 by Abdül Hamit II. It occupies the site, however, of a mosque by Sinan which was founded by Süleyman the Magnificent in memory of his hunchback son Cihangir, who died in 1553 from sorrow, it is said, for his half-brother, the unfortunate Prince Mustafa, whom their father had just executed; Prince Cihangir was buried in the türbe of his other brother Mehmet at the
Ş
ehzade. Sinan’s mosque was burned down in 1720 and several times thereafter reconstructed and burned down, until the present rather exception ally ugly mosque was built, “bigger and better than the old ones,” as Abdül Hamit boasts in his inscription over the portal.

On the Bosphorus side of the shore highway in F
ı
nd
ı
kl
ı
one comes to the Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi, or Fine Arts Academy, which is now part of Mimar Sinan Universitesi, the University of Sinan the Architect. The academy has an exhibition hall on the Bosphorus where art exhibits are held periodically.

MOLLA ÇELEB
İ
CAM
İ
İ

At F
ı
nd
ı
kl
ı
there is a little mosque of Sinan’s called Molla Çelebi Camii. This Molla was the Kad
ı
asker (Chief Justice) Mehmet Efendi, a savant and poet; he built here also a hamam, but this was demolished when the street was widened. Erected in A.H. 969 (A.D. 1561–2), the building is of the hexagonal type, but here the pillars are actually engaged in the walls; between them to north and south are four small semidomes, and another covers the rectangular projecting apse in which stands the mihrab. The mosque is at the water’s edge and its position as well as its graceful lines make it very picturesque.

Between here and Dolmabahçe there are three fountains of considerable interest, all of which were moved from their original places when the street was widened and have been re-erected on their present sites. Between the mosque and the Kabata
ş
ferry landing, beside the Bosphorus, stands the square çe
ş
me of Hekimo
ğ
lu Ali Pa
ş
a erected in 1732; it is of marble, beautifully carved; it had lost its overhanging roof but this has now been replaced. There are çe
ş
mes on two faces of the fountain. Nearly opposite this çe
ş
me, across the road, is one of the most pleasing of the baroque or rococo sebils, built by Koca Yusuf Pa
ş
a, Grand Vezir to Abdül Hamit I, in 1787. It has a magnificent çe
ş
me in the centre, flanked on each side by two grilled windows of the sebil, and a door beyond; it is elaborately carved and has incrustations of various marbles, while its long inscription forms a frieze above the windows of the sebil. It is pleasantly embowered in trees and is once more in use as a sebil, with the tables of a little café in front of it. Finally, just opposite the Dolmabahçe mosque is a little külliye with a sebil as its dominant feature. This was built in 1741 by the sipahi Hac
ı
Mehmet Emin A
ğ
a. Halil Ethem says rightly that it is “perhaps the most interesting eighteenth-century sebil in Istanbul.” The five-windowed sebil is flanked symmetrically on one side by a door, on the other by a çe
ş
me; there follow three grilled windows opening into a small graveyard for the members of the sipahi’s family, his own tomb being, most unusually, in the sebil itself; beyond the graveyard there was once a small mektep which has not been restored. The whole is handsomely carved and decorated with various marbles. This poor little complex has been several times demolished and re-erected in slightly different places; it still remains incompletely restored.

We now come to Dolmabahçe, where Gümü
ş
suyu Caddesi passes the main football stadium in the city and joins the Bosphorus road. Just before this intersection one comes to a baroque mosque on the seaside, with a clock-tower of similar style at the far end of a terrace to the north, beyond which is Dolmabahçe Palace. Dolmabahçe Camii, begun by Bezmialem Valide Sultan, was finished in 1853 by her son Abdül Mecit. Like the neighbouring palace, it was designed by Niko
ğ
os Balyan, a grandson of the Kirkor whom we have already met as architect of the Nusretiye. He came at a bad period and it is only with difficulty that one can admire any of his buildings. The great cartwheel-like arches of this mosque seem particularly disagreeable; but the two very slender Corinthian minarets, one at each end of the little palace-like structure that precedes the mosque, have a certain charm. The baroque clock-tower to the north of the mosque was erected by Niko
ğ
os Balyan in 1854; it is made of cut stone and has a height of 27 metres, making it one of the most prominent landmarks on the European shore of the lower Bosphorus.

DOLMABAHÇE PALACE

We now come to Dolmabahçe Saray
ı
, the largest and grandest by far of the imperial palaces on the Bosphorus. The name means filled-in garden, for this was once an inlet of the Bosphorus and a harbour before it was filled in to create a royal park, a process begun by Ahmet I and completed by Osman II. A series of kiosks and seaside pavilions were later built in the park by the royal family, eventually evolving into a palace with a great Hall of the Divan for meetings of the state council. Mahmut II was the first sultan to make Dolmabahçe his principal residence, finding the palace on the Bosphorus more comfortable and agreeably situated than the crowded confines of Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
. Abdül Mecit decided to build a much larger and more luxurious palace at Dolmabahçe, appointing as his chief architect Niko
ğ
os Balyan, who worked in collaboration with his father, Karabet. The Balyans were from a distinguished Armenian family of architects who built several palaces and mosques for the sultans during the second half of the nineteenth century. The present palace of Dolmabahçe was completed in 1854, although Sultan Abdül Mecit and the royal family did not move in till 1856, finally abandoning the palace at Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
that had been the imperial residence for nearly four centuries. Dolmabahçe was used as the principal imperial residence by all of the latter sultans except Abdül Hamit II, who preferred his own more sequestered palace at Y
ı
ld
ı
z. After the end of the Empire, Dolmabahçe served for a time as a state residence and was used to entertain visiting royalty and other distinguished visitors. Atatürk used it as the presidential residence when he was in Istanbul, and he died here on 10 November 1938. In recent years Dolmabahçe has been completely restored and is now open as a museum, one of the most popular attractions in the city. Tours of the palace begin at the ornate entryway to the south of the palace, passing from there through the royal gardens to the south wing of the palace.

The most impressive aspect of the palace is its seaside façade of white marble, with the edifice itself 284 metres in length along the seaside and fronting on a walled quay 600 metres long. The central part of the palace is a great imperial state hall flanked by the two main wings containing the state rooms and the royal apartments, the selaml
ı
k on one side and the harem on the other, with the apartment of the Sultan Valide in a separate wing linked to the harem through the apartment of the Crown Prince, and with an additional harem for his women and those of the other princes, and then still another residence at the north-west corner of the palace for the K
ı
zlar A
ğ
as
ı
, the Chief Black Eunuch. The palace complex also included rooms for those of the palace staff who lived within Dolmabahçe, as well as kitchens, an imaret to feed the staff, a pharmacy, stables, carriage houses, and barracks for the halberdiers who guarded the imperial residence. All in all, there are a total of 285 rooms, 43 large salons, six balconies, and six hamams on three storeys, with the Sultan’s private bath equipped with an alabaster bath tub.

The palace interior was the work of the French decorator Sechan, who designed the Paris Opera, and thus the decor and furniture of Dolmabahçe are strongly reminiscent of those of French palaces and mansions of the period. A number of European artists were commissioned to adorn the palace with paintings, murals and ceiling frescoes, and outstanding examples of their work, most notably works of Zonaro, Fromentin, and Aivazovkski, can be seen
in situ
and also in the Exhibition Hall, which has a separate entrance approached by the ornate entryway on the main road. The opulent furnishings of the palace includ 4,455 square metres of hand-woven Hereke carpets; fireplaces and chandeliers of Bohemian and Baccarat crystal, with the chandeliers numbering 36 in all, the biggest being the 4.5-tonne giant that hangs over the State Room, the largest chandelier in the world. Other furnishings include some 280 Chinese, Japanese, European and Turkish porcelains, the latter produced in the workshops of Y
ı
ld
ı
z Palace, along with 156 clocks, more than 500 silver and crystal candelabras, a dozen silver braziers, and innumerable sets of crystal and silverware. A great showpiece is the ornate stairway that leads up from the Salon of the Ambassadors, its balusters made of crystal and its upper level framed with a colonnade of monoliths of variegated marble, the grandest of seven stairways in the palace.