Pera and Galata - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 401

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Pera and Galata
The historic origins of Pera and Galata are as remote in time as that
of Constantinople itself.
From very early times there had been settlements and com-
munities along the northern shores of the Golden Horn; Byzas
himself is said to have erected a temple there to the hero Amphiaraus.
The most important of these communities, Sykai, the Figtrees, where
Galata now stands, was already in the fifth century A.D. included
as the VIIIth Region, Regio Sycaena, of the city of Constantinople
itself: it had churches, a forum, baths, a theatre, a harbour and a
protecting wall. In 528 Justinian restored its theatre and wall and
called it grandiloquently after himself Justinianae, a name which was
soon forgotten. Towards the end of the same century, Tiberius II
(r. 578-82) is said to have built a fortress to guard the entrance to
the Golden Horn, from which a chain could be stretched to the
opposite shore to close its mouth against enemy shipping; some
substructures of this still exist at Yer Altı Camii near the Galata
Bridge (see Chapter 21). The name, Sykai, continued in use until,
in the ninth century, the name Galata began to supplant it, at first
for a small district only, later for the whole region. The derivation
of the name Galata is unknown, though that of the other apellation,
Pera, is quite straightforward. In Greek pera means “beyond”, at first
in the general sense of “on the other side of the Golden Horn”, later
restricted to medieval Galata, and still later to the heights above. In
the past generation these old Greek names have been supplanted
by new Turkish ones; Pera is now known officially as Beyoğlu and
Galata as Karaköy, but old residents of the town still refer to these
quarters by their ancient names.
The town of Galata took its present form chiefly under the
Genoese. After the reconquest of Constantinople from the Latins in
1261, the Byzantine emperors granted the district to the Genoese as a