x0x Galata In just 152 square metersBy BAHAR KALKAN Once transformed from a walled medieval town into a commercial center, Galata's history is now being rediscovered even as it was teetering on the brink of oblivion. It doesn't occur to most of us in the daily grind to take a stroll as travelers through the city in which we live. Somehow we can never find the time to wander aimlessly through its streets with a guidebook in our hand, to take photographs or buy little presents for our friends and souvenirs for ourselves. Or perhaps it does occur to us every now and then but we always put it off for some reason. To be perfectly honest, even I am one of those who people say to themselves year after year, "Spring is the most beautiful season in Istanbul. This spring I'm going to stroll through Istanbul like a stranger and rediscover it." Yet somehow I never managed to set out on one of those 'renewal of love' tours. Until, that is, I toured the 'Galata through the Ages' exhibition that opened recently in one of Galata's loveliest buildings. Galata for me was just a point of transit that I pass through when returning from Beyoglu to Kadikoy, a place whose name I hardly ever mentioned, referring to it as either Karakoy or Beyoglu. A place where I bought fresh fish at the stalls near the ferry landing, where I caught my breath on the Galata Bridge, or stood and admired the statues on the facades of the buildings on the square, a place with which I was not particularly familiar even though I knew it was steeped in history. The exhibition, which became an occasion for me to renew my acquaintance with Galata, is in a building constructed in 1890-92 as the Main Headquarters of the Ottoman Bank, the most prominent building of its period after the Galata Tower. For some time now the Ottoman Bank Museum has been hosting modest yet impressive exhibitions, coordinated by Museum Director Sima Benaroya and aided by the research of Prof. Dr. Edhem Eldem and the creativity of Bulent Erkmen. The 'Galata through the Ages' exhibition, which runs to 26 August, acknowledges the Museum's debt of gratitude to its host, which was on the verge of oblivion despite having been a major center in the past, but whose star today is once again in the ascendant. A 2000-YEAR HISTORY Edhem Eldem explains that Byzantine Galata, whose history dates back to the 1st century B.C., was a small settlement on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn known as Sykai (Fig Trees). In planning the exhibition, he adds, they treated the transformation of Galata over a period of six centuries in three different dimensions - space, time and people. The exhibition is designed around an insurance map produced for Galata in 1905. Walking over this map, which is on a scale of 1/500, is a little like taking a stroll through the Galata of those years. Another key feature of the exhibition design are two dual-projectors, each casting images on two screens. One screen depicts the main stages of a two-thousand-year historical process with a brief text and pictures that help us to visualize the period to some extent, while the other indicates the place in Galata's topography of the area being described on first screen. The map too begins to take on color with the settlement of the Genoese in Galata at the end of the 12th century. In her book, 'Galata and Pera', Nur Akin explains that in this period Genoese, Venetians and Pisans lived at Galata, which was of great importance due to its port; in particular, that the Genoese secured special privileges from the Byzantines and, exploiting the Empire's weakened state, encircled the area with walls. On the screen we can see the creation and development of those walls, which are one of Galata's most significant features and, of course, the Galata Tower, the only building from the period still standing today. |
The Muslim population also begins to swell with the Turkish conquest of the city, and Galata, never losing its importance as a commercial center, continues to grow making up one-tenth of the city's population. In the photographs coming and going on the screen and in the colors on the map we can also follow how, without losing its characteristic cosmopolitan structure, the balance of the wood frame and masonry buildings changed starting in the 1850s, and the number of office and apartment buildings increased in the last quarter of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. So much did Galata grow that it gave rise to Pera in the previously unoccupied area to the north with the arrival of the non-Muslim minorities who came in the wake of the European embassies that settled along the axis that is Istiklal Avenue today. And closer to our own day, I bear witness, a little sadly, to the emergence of today's Karaköy square and main avenue in the demolition of 1958, and to the expropriation of properties along the shore in the 1980s. 1905: TWO SEPARATE WORLDS The second of the dual-projectors shows the Galata of a hundred years ago, when the district's most detailed insurance map was made in 1905. Here too one of the screens is allocated to topographical data, the other to texts and illustrations. Clearly visible in color on the map, which has an extremely dense texture, are the Muslim quarters concentrated in the western sector, the Greeks who were spread diffusely over the entire district, the Jews and Armenians who were concentrated in a single central area, the rise of apartment buildings in the direction of Beyoglu, the tiny shops and large office buildings, and the distribution of bakeries, grocery shops and coffeehouses, as well as taverns and other places of entertainment. Eldem says that these projected images constitute the heart of the exhibition, which aims through them to illustrate the relationship between time, space and man. "There is a widespread pre-conceived notion that Galata was the Ottoman center of foreignness and modernity. While correct to some degree, this must be shown to have its limitations," says Eldem, going on to explain that in 1905 two worlds still co-existed here; for example, that the eastern sector between Azapkapi and the Arab Mosque had a very traditional structure while the commercial hub was centered around the harbor and today's Karakoy. The Galata Tower of course also speaks volumes about Istanbul and Galata, but it chooses to express itself through looks. When you enter the cylindrical section that is also set up on the map, you are surrounded by three different 360-degree panoramas showing Istanbul as seen from the Galata Tower at approximately hundred-year intervals. Naturally Galata is also included in the view. These three panoramas, one drawn in 1813 by Henry Aston Barker, one photographed around 1900 and the present-day one specially commissioned to photographer Serdar Tanyeli, are arranged one below the other to enable visitors to follow the transformation of the district through parallel images in just a few steps. A KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLORS I continue following other traces of the city's history in the panels arranged at the sides of the map and in the objects on display. The walls that made it a medieval town, its streets 'like a chessboard' as Evliya Celebi put it, the architectural language of the buildings from classical Ottoman to art nouveau, the bustling commercial life, the colorful ethnic mix, and the everyday life, particularly the varieties of entertainment, are brought to life on six panels, in photographs, engravings, and snippets from contemporary documents, written texts and pictures. Exhibited on the backs of these panels and on two other panels are original documents in the form of books and maps, while two Genoese gravestones stand watch like monuments over their history. Although no catalogue was prepared for the exhibition, there is something even better: an illustrated map of Galata. Galata is like a colorful kaleidoscope that presents different views every time you turn it. And in the pleasure of partaking in those colors, I hit the streets now with all the enthusiasm of a foreign traveler. For who can tell the story of Galata better than Galata itself. |
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