Pera and Galata - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 409

three months in the city this great lover made not a single conquest
and was himself seduced by one Ismail Efendi.
Returning to Istiklal Caddesi we come next to the Franciscan
church of St. Mary Draperis, down a flight of steps from the street
level. The first church on this site was built in 1678 and the present
structure dates from 1789. The parish itself, however, is a very ancient
one, dating to the beginning of the year 1453 when the Franciscans
built a church near the present site of Sirkeci Station. After the
Conquest the Franciscans were forced to leave Constantinople,
settling first in Galata and then later here in Pera. The Franciscans
still preserve a miraculous icon of the Virgin which they claim to have
taken with them from their first church in Constantinople.
Just past the church we come to the Russian Embassy; this was
built in 1837 by the Fossati brothers who, a decade later, were to
restore Haghia Sophia. The Fossati brothers had been for several years
in Moscow as official architects to the Tsar, who sent them to Istanbul
to build his new embassy; here they remained for 20 years or so as
official architects to the Sultan.
Down a steep street to the left beyond the Russian Embassy
and around a corner to the left we come to the Crimean Memorial
Church, by far the largest and most handsome of the few Protestant
churches in the city. This was built between 1858 and 1868 under the
aegis of Lord Stratford de Redclife and was designed by C.E. Street,
the architect of the London Law Courts. It is a very Streetian Gothic
building with a cavernous porch, like the Law Courts themselves.
Returning once again to Istiklal Caddesi, we come next to the last
of the old embassies on the avenue. This is the Embassy of Sweden,
which was established here towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Directly across the street from the Swedish Embassy is the Narmanlı
Han, a huge old building which housed the Russian Embassy till they
moved to their new quarters down the street in 1837. This building,
which appears to date from the early eighteenth century, is now a
congeries of shops, storerooms, offices and ateliers.
We are now at the end of Istiklal Caddesi. Just ahead, where the
avenue forks to the right, is the entrance to Tünel, the underground