A Beyoğlu Topophilia: For Those Smitten with Galata-Pera

Beyoğlu, on the map of Istanbul, sits along the northern shore of the Golden Horn. It is the name given to an entire district made up of many neighborhoods, yet for most of us, it conjures up something far narrower and far more familiar: a cluster of adjoining quarters centered around Galata, rising from the shores of Karaköy, connecting to the Pera axis, and stretching into the streets of Cihangir and Çukurcuma; neighborhoods made to be experienced on foot. This piece is dedicated to those who, when they hear the word Beyoğlu, find a faint smile on their face and a host of memories suspended in their mind, summoning this familiar image: the lovers of the Galata-Pera district. Because, most likely, we share something in common.

Pera Bakery | Pera Meşrutiyet Avenue

When I learned that the love we feel for certain cities, neighborhoods or streets actually has a name, I felt as though it described me, and many of the people I know. The fact that my closest friends from university and I, still, find ourselves in Beyoğlu at almost every chance we get to meet; that I met someone I love here, both of us looking out at the same view; that even during the period I lived in this district, I felt the same enchantment every morning as I gazed at the Galata Tower; that the Sundays when I sip my coffee and read the papers at a Cihangir café always taste a little different... None of this could be a coincidence. Either I had some connection to this place in a previous life, or this state of enchantment must have an actual name in the literature. Turns out it's the latter: the Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, in his 1974 book Topophilia, gave the name "topophilia" to the affective bond a person forms with a place, a landscape or a city. The concept describes the sense of identity and belonging we build with a place over time. What we call "loving" a place is in fact a layered feeling: it is at once feeling that you belong somewhere, and quietly claiming that place as a part of yourself, keeping it safe in your memory. Like being an Istanbulite, a New Yorker, a Londoner, a Berliner. The shared feeling among those who have walked, sat, written and loved in the Galata-Pera district for years, regardless of their age or their outlook on life, is exactly this: the emotional bond, the belonging, the love they hold for this place.

Galata Tower | Bereketzade Street

If a name exists for being smitten with a place, then surely that place must have a past, a soul worth being smitten with, no? The peculiar pull Galata-Pera exerts on us today comes, in part, from its remarkably rich history and the lived experiences accumulated over centuries. The story of the district begins in the 13th century, when the Genoese settled on the northern shore of the Golden Horn (today's Galata) and founded a walled trade colony. Most of the walls the Genoese built around their colony were torn down in the 19th century; the most magnificent piece still standing today is the Galata Tower. The boundaries of Constantinople (which would officially be renamed Istanbul in 1930) are at the time confined to the south of the Golden Horn, within today's historic peninsula (the area of Sultanahmet, Eminönü, and Fatih); Galata, on the opposite shore, is a separate settlement standing "outside" the city. An independent settlement in its own right, this colony over time brings with it its own language, cuisine and architecture. After the Ottoman conquest, the European quarter that spreads up the hills above the walled Galata district comes to be called "Pera"; Greek for "the other side." With the rights granted by Mehmed the Conqueror to non-Muslim communities, Pera transforms over the centuries into one of the city's most cosmopolitan districts, where Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and the Europeans who came later, the Levantines, live side by side. By the 19th century, Pera, with its embassies, theaters, cafés, opera houses, foreign schools and patisseries, is the city's liveliest district and its "face turned toward the West."

Saint Anthony of Padua Church | İstiklal Avenue

Of course, this Western face did not appear overnight. The greatest turning point in shaping the district's current architectural character was the Great Pera Fire of 1870. More than three thousand buildings were reduced to ashes. After the fire, some areas were rebuilt through planned reconstruction efforts, while others were rebuilt gradually, one building at a time. The spirit of this individual rebuilding was breathed into the district by Levantine families like the Camondos, Botters, Allatinis and Mizzis: the city's wealthy non-Muslim citizens commissioned the period's finest architects to build on their burned-down lots. Most of these architects were of Italian, French or Levantine origin, and they carried Europe's aesthetic language into Istanbul. Names like Alexandre Vallaury (Pera Palace, the Imperial Ottoman Bank building), Raimondo D'Aronco (the Botter Apartment, Istanbul's first Art Nouveau building), Giulio Mongeri (Karaköy Palas, Maçka Palas), Yénidunia and Kyriakidis (the Frej Apartment), and Hovsep Aznavur are the signatures of this era. The balconies of Paris, the arched windows of Vienna, the ornate façades of Milan slowly settled into the streets of Galata, Asmalımescit and Tepebaşı.

Crimean Memorial Church | Serdar-ı Ekrem Street

In short, when we walk from Karaköy through Boğazkesen to Galata, then onto the Pera and İstiklal Avenue line, and then down to Çukurcuma and Cihangir, we are actually walking on a city of layered histories. On top of the Genoese walls, the cosmopolitan fabric of the Ottomans; on top of that, the European elegance of the Levantines; and on top of all of it, the layers of the Republic and our own day. Every corner stares back at you from a different century. The texture of one street carries another street; the ornament of one façade holds the trace of another era. Perhaps what we love is exactly this: the accumulated form of all that has been lived here.