Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
11
From the
Galata Bridge
to Şehzadebaşı
Once more we begin our stroll at the Galata Bridge, this time to
begin walking up the shore of the Golden Horn before heading up
hill to the district called Şehzadebaşı, just to the north of the Şehzade
mosque. The first part of our stroll takes us through the oldest market
area of the city, a rough and colourful quarter that is stubbornly
resisting attempts to modernize it.
THE PRISON TOWER
The part of the market district just above the Galata Bridge and
between the shore road and the Golden Horn is known as Zindan
Kapı, or the Prison Gate. This waterfront quarter was one of the
oldest and most picturesque neighbourhoods in Istanbul, but in the
early 1970s almost all of its buildings were demolished in a project
designed to create parks along the shore of the Golden Horn but
which here resulted only in a scabrous parking lot. One of the few
surviving monuments is an ancient tower behind a late Ottoman
commercial building known as the Zindan Han. This is by far the
largest of the few surviving defence towers of the medieval Byzantine
sea-walls along the Golden Horn. The tower was for centuries used
as a prison (in Turkish,
zindan
) by both the Byzantines and the
Ottomans, particularly for galley slaves. Within the tower, known
to the Venetians as the Bagno, is buried a certain Cafer Baba,
who, according to legend, came to Constantinople as the envoy of
Harun al-Rashid to the Empress Eirene (r. 797-802), but was here
imprisoned and died; his grave was rediscovered and restored after
the Conques and is to this day much venerated. According to Evliya
Çelebi: “Cafer Baba was buried in a place within the prison of the
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