Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (62 page)

The little archipelago consists of nine islands, four of them of a certain size, the rest tiny. Ferries stop in turn at the four principal isles, the closest of which is K
ı
nal
ı
, known to the Greeks as Proti, followed by Burgaz (Antigoni), Heybeliada (Halki) and finally Büyükada (Prinkipo), the largest and most populous of the isles. During the summer months there is a ferry from Büyükada to Sedef. There are a few summer residents on Ka
ş
ı
kadas
ı
(Pita), but Tav
ş
anadas
ı
(Neandros), Yass
ı
ada (Plati) and Sivriada (Oxia) are uninhabited. Except for a few municipal vehicles, only faytons, or horse-drawn carriages, are used on Büyükada, Heybeliada and Burgaz, while not even those are allowed on K
ı
nal
ı
.

The nearest of the large islands is some 15 kilometres from the city; it is appropriately called Proti (First) by the Greeks. Its Turkish name is K
ı
nal
ı
, Dyed-with-Henna, because of the reddish colour of its cliffs along the shore. It is a rather barren island, but the village is very pretty and next to it there is a pebble beach. The house at #23 Faz
ı
l Ahmet Aykaç Caddesi was the home of the famous Armenian composer Gomidas during the years 1909–13. The island has always had an Armenian community, though here and on the other three large islands the great majority of the year-round residents are Muslim Turks, with small Greek communities on Burgaz, Heybeliada and Büyükada, where there is also a Jewish community. In times past the islands were predominately Greek. The Armenian church, dedicared to St. Gregory the Illuminator, was founded in 1857; the present building is the result of a complete reconstruction in 1998. The Greek church, dedicated to the Birth of the All Holy Mother of God, was founded in 1886. When the foundations of the present church were being built a number of ancient architectural fragments were unearthed, and two of these are now arrayed in the forecourt, including a sixth-century capital similar to those in Haghia Sophia. It is possible that these belonged to a Byzantine monastery that stood on this site.

There is a Greek monastery dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ on the peak of one of the island’s three hills, Manastir Tepesi. This was built in the Ottoman period on the site of a Byzantine monastery of the same name. Three Byzantine emperors spent their last days in exile in this monastery after they were deposed: Michael I Rhangabe (r. 811–13), Romanus I Lecapenus (r. 919–44) and Romanus IV Diogenes (r. 1067–71).

The second large island is called Burgaz by the Turks (from the Greek
pyrgos =
tower), on account of an ancient watchtower on its summit that is mentioned by travellers as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Byzantines called it Panormos or later – and still today – Antigone. It is about the same size as K
ı
nal
ı
but much more fertile and well-wooded, and thus more pleasant to wander about on.

The village is quite pretty and there are a number of fine houses of the late Ottoman and early Republican eras. The house at #15 Çay
ı
r Aral
ı
ğ
ı
Soka
ğ
ı
was in the years 1934–54 the house of the famous writer Sait Faik Abas
ı
yan
ı
k, and it is now open as a museum dedicated to his memory.

The most prominent monument in the village is the Greek church of St. John the Baptist, built in 1899. The church is believed to stand on the site of a Byzantine monastery of the same name. This was the monastery where St. Methodius Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople (r. 842–6), was exiled by Michael II in the years 822–9 because of his opposition to the emperor’s policy of iconoclasm. The crypt beneath the present church of St. John is dedicated to St. Methodius, for this is where he is believed to have been imprisoned during his exile on the island.

The Greek monastery of St. George Karyptis is on the northern shore of the island, approached along Gönüllü Caddesi. Although the monastery is believed to have been founded in the Byzantine era, the earliest reference to it is in the second half of the seventeeenth century. This was when the Greek innkeepers of Istanbul decided to restore and maintain the monastery, which apparently had fallen into ruins. The present dormitory was erected in 1858–9, while the church was erected in 1897. There are ancient architectural fragments which would appear to have been part of the original monastery, including a capital in the courtyard and part of an architrave set into the entryway of the enclosure.

The site of the Byzantine monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ is on the summit of Hristos Tepesi, the Hill of Christ. Greek tradition has it that the monastery was founded by Basil I the Macedonian (r. 867–76), and there is evidence of a decree by Manuel I Comnenus granting its rights as a monastery in 1158. The earliest reference to the monastery after the Conquest is by Petrus Gyllius in 1547. All that remains today is an abandoned church built in 1869 and a two-storey building erected in the eighteenth century, along with the ruins of earlier structures. Inside the entrance to the enclosure there are a number of ancient architectural fragments, including four beautifully carved Byzantine capitals.

Just opposite the landing-stage at Burgaz is a tiny island called Ka
ş
ı
k, or Spoon, because of its shape. Its Greek name is Pita, or Piece of Bread. It is the smallest isle of the Princes’ Islands and its highest point is a mere 18 metres above sea level. It has no known history, and it was the only isle in the archipelago that did not have a monastery in Byzantine times. It was virtually uninhabited up until recent times, but now a number of summer houses have been built on it.

Some little distance off to the west of Burgaz lie the two small outlying islands of the group, Sivriada, known in Greek as Oxya, and Yass
ı
ada, Plate in Greek. The Turkish and Greek names are descriptive and mean the same thing in each case – the Pointed and the Flat. Both islands are uninhabited; they can be reached by hiring a boat on Burgaz.

Sivri is nothing but a tall craggy reef rising to a height of 90 metres, taller than any of the Seven Hills of Constantinople. The south-eastern part of the island was used as a quarry to provide stone for the new Kad
ı
köy pier and breakwater, and as a result that side of the hill has been gouged away. Beside the landing-stage you can see the substantial remains of a Byzantine monastery. This is mentioned in the list of monasteries compiled in 1158 by Manuel I Comnenus. The monastery had two churches: a katholikon of the Archangel Michael and a chapel dedicated to a number of martyr saints. The island’s chief fame in more recent times stems from the fact that on several occasions all the wild dogs of Istanbul were rounded up and exiled there where they soon ate each other up.

Yass
ı
ada, as its name implies, is relatively flat, with a maximum elevation of 40 metres. It too had a monastery, founded, according to tradition, in the mid-ninth century by St. Ignatius, twice Patriarch of Constantinople. The monastery is mentioned in the list compiled in 1158 by Manuel I Comnenus, who noted that it had a katholikon dedicated to the Forty Martyrs and also a chapel of the Virgin. Ernest Mamboury, in his 1943 guide to the Princes’ Islands, reports that he found remnants of one of these churches, whose ruins now seem to have vanished. Directly above the landing stage we see the folly that Murray’s
Handbook
of 1892 quaintly describes as “a dilapidated Anglo-Saxon castle”, built by Sir Henry Bulwer, English ambassador to the Sublime Porte and brother of the novelist Bulwer-Lytton; here he is popularly supposed to have indulged in nameless orgies. To the right of this we see one of the buildings erected for the trial of the deposed Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and several of his associates. After a lengthy trial they were convicted, whereupon on the night of 16–17 September 1961 Menderes and two of his ministers were hanged on Imral
ı
, an island off to the south-west in the Sea of Marmara. Other abandoned buildings on Yass
ı
ada were structures erected in the 1960s for a short-lived military school.

The third of the large islands is nowadays called Heybeliada, Saddle-Bag Island, from its shape; anciently it was known as Chalkitis or Halki, from the famous copper mines mentioned by Aristotle. The island has (or had) two important schools of rather different sorts. The elder, which was closed by the government in 1971, was the principal theological seminary of the Greek Orthodox Church, housed in modern buildings among the remnants of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, of Byzantine foundation, on an incomparable site in the saddle between the two summits of the northern hill. The younger, the Turkish Naval College, is chiefly at the water’s edge near the landing stage, but also occupies the site of another Byzantine monastery on a hill to the west. This site preserves the only surviving Byzantine church in the Islands, and a very interesting one. Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Kamariotissa, it is a tiny chapel of the quatrefoil or tetraconch variety, that is, with a central dome surrounded by four semidomes over exedrae, three of which project on the outside, the fourth being contained within the narthex. The other church of this plan in the city, that of St. Mary of the Mongols, has been completely wrecked by subsequent rebuilding, so that the present little chapel is the only example of its kind that more or less preserves its original plan. The chapel is attributed to Maria Comnena, third wife of John VIII Palaeologus and the last Empress of Byzantium. It was built some time between 1427 and 1439 and is thus the last known church to be erected in the city before the Turkish Conquest. The church remained in the possession of the Greek community up until 1942, when it was confiscated by the government. It is not generally open to the public, but permission to visit it may be obtained from the Com mandant of the Naval School.

On the shore south of the village, just beyond the grounds of the Naval School, we see the monastery of Haghios Georgios tou Kremnou (St. George on the Cliff). The setting is quite beautiful, with pines, cypresses and other trees embowering the picturesque buildings of the monastery above the blue Marmara. The monastery is believed to have been founded in the years 1586–93; it is still functioning, though with only one or two monks in residence.

There is another monastery on the south-west coast of the island, that of St. Spyridon. This little monastery was founded in 1868 and restored in 1968 by the then Patriarch, Athenagoras. The katholikon of the monastery remains in use, though services are held there only occasionally. There are the remnants of still another monastery, that of the Metamorphosis of Christ the Saviour, on the peak known as Baltac
ı
o
ğ
lu Tepesi at the south-eastern end of the island. This was founded in 1835; all that remains today is a small chapel and an attached house, both embowered in a picturesque setting on the hilltop.

The Greek church of St. Nicholas dominates the main square in the village. It was erected in 1857 on the ruins of a Byzantine church dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron of mariners, appropriate for an island where in times past virtually all of the men were seafarers or fishermen.

The house at #7 Refah
Ş
ehitler Caddesi is now a museum dedicated to the memory of Ismet Inönü, the first prime minister of the Turkish Republic and later president of Turkey. The house at #19 Demirta
ş
Soka
ğ
ı
is a house museum honouring Hüseyin Rahmi Gürp
ı
nar, the renowned journalist, essayist and novelist.

We come at last to the largest of the islands, Büyükada, the Greek Prinkipo. This is the only one most people visit and is the summer resort
par excellence.
Its rapidly expanding village has a large number of attractive residences surrounded by well-kept gardens, several good hotels and a very posh country-club, the Anadolu Club. Some of the grandest of the mansions are along Çankaya Caddesi, including the Fabiato Kö
ş
kü, built in 1878 and restored in 1997 by Çelik Gülersoy of the Turkish Touring and Automobile as the Büyükada Cultural Centre, with a café-restaurant. The Iliasko Yal
ı
Kö
ş
kü at the foot of Hamlac
ı
Soka
ğ
ı
was during the years 1929–33 the home of Leon Trotsky when he was living in exile on Büyükada, and it was here that he wrote his autobiography and began his
History of the Russian Revolution
.

There are two Greek churches in the village. The church of the Dormition of the Mother of God was first erected on its present site in 1735 and was renovated in 1871. The church of St. Dimitrios was built in 1856–60. When the foundations were being laid workers found a relief monogram of the emperor Justin II (r. 565–78), who built a palace and monastery on the island in 569. It is from Justin that the island took its name Prinkipo, the Isle of the Prince.

Once you get out of the built-up area you find lovely pine groves and other forests, wild cliffs plunging down to the sea, and sandy coves for bathing. But in summer the island is really too crowded; the best time for a visit is early spring or late autumn, or on those magical warm and sunny days that occur here from time to time in the depth of winter: then the island is really perfect, for you have the amenities of civilization without the people.