Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ruination was brought about in the last great sieges of the city, by
the Crusaders in 1203-4 and the Turks in 1453. In both instances
the besiegers lined up their warships against the sea-walls along the
Golden Horn and repeatedly assaulted them. And the destruction
wrought by these sieges and subsequent centuries of decay is now
being rapidly completed by the encroachment of modern highways
and factories.
The sea-walls along the Golden Horn were pierced by about a score
of gates and posterns, many of them famous in the history of the city.
Of these only one or two remain, although the location of the others
can easily be determined, since the streets of the modern town still
converge to where these ancient gates once opened, following the
same routes they have for many centuries past. The first of these gates
which we pass on our tour is about 450 metres along from the Atatürk
Bridge. This is Cibali Kapı, known in Byzantium as the Porta Puteae.
A Turkish inscription beside the gate commemorates the fact that it
was breached on 29 May 1453, the day on which Constantinople
fell to the Turks. This gate also marks the point which stood opposite
the extreme left wing of the Venetian fleet in their final assault on 12
April 1204.
The huge building along the side of the avenue before Cibali Kapı
is Kadır Has University. This private Turkish university, founded in
2002, is housed in the former Cibali Tobacco and Cigarette Factory,
which opened in 1884. The factory was designed by Alexandre
Vallaury and built by the architect Hovsep Aznavur. The factory
was long disused before it was superbly restored and converted into
a university. During the restoration an early Byzantine cistern was
discovered beyond the end of the building near Cibali Kapı.
About 250 metres past Cibali Kapı we come on the left to a
little pink-walled Greek church dedicated to St. Nicholas. This
church dates to about 1720 and was originally the metochion, or
private property, of the Vathopedi Monastery on Mount Athos. The
corbelled stone structure in which the church is housed is typical of
the so-called meta-Byzantine buildings we will see along the shore
of the Golden Horn, most of them dating from the seventeenth or
eighteenth century. The principal treasure of the church is a very rare
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