The Yedikule Fortress is an Ottoman expansion of the original Byzantine Golden Gate defences. Named for the seven towers that make it up, four of these are original Byzantine and the other three were added by Mehmet the Conquerer.
Visiting Yedikule Fortress
The following information is copied from atriptoistanbul’s website:
Visiting Yedikule Hisari is of course not as easy as visiting one of the city’s central attractions, because of the distance, however this is a great excuse to see a more authentic and residential side of Istanbul. The easiest and quickest way is to take the train, which means you don’t have to sit in endless amounts of traffic around Fatih and the smaller distracts past there. Head to Sirkeci Station in Fatih and take the train to Halkali. Yedikule is part way between the two and the stop will be well announced.
Of course, you could take the bus if you really want to, and there is a direct bus from Eminonu to Yedikule which runs a few times per day. Remember, traffic around this part of the city in particular can be very bad at certain times, and also grid locked occasionally. You basically won’t feel like you’re going anywhere very fast!
Yedikule HIsari is open every day apart from Wednesdays, and from 9.30am until 4.30pm. It will cost you just 5TL to go inside, and you should certainly remember your camera for the stunning views over the surrounding area.
My Experience
We cheated and took the taxi here which was fantastic as we were able to stop at various points to examine the Byzantine city walls, as shown on this page. The Yedikule Fortress has been restored so it is more intact than a lot of the crumbling European ruins with those pesky heritage orders on them!
You can walk around pretty much anywhere but there is very little information and also no interior buildings. It is very much a shell and I guess the city has so many impressive buildings in the centre for tourists that it just isn’t worth developing a site further out.
On the plus side, we were the only visitors and the views over the city walls, the city itself and the Bay of Marmaris were impressive! This visit was part of a long weekend we spent in the city, mostly exploring the Byzantine ruins, detailed in my blog here.
Yedikule Fortress Photo Gallery
History
If Topkapı Palace represents the most sophisticated side of the Ottoman power, the Yedikule Fortress stands for its darkest face. As La Bastille in Paris and Alcatraz in San Francisco, Yedikule Hisarı (“Fortress of Seven Towers”), is the most dreadful dungeon in the history of Istanbul.
Also known as Yedikule Zindanları, it was built after the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II by adding three new towers to the existing Byzantine walls, at the level of the famous Golden Gate. In the Ottoman period it was used as a treasury and archive but, as already mentioned above, it’s best known for being used as a prison. In Yedikule they were imprisoned, among others, Romanian rulers Prince Petru Cercel, Constantin Brancoveanu with his children, Sultan Osman II, David Komnenos, last emperor of Trebizond, and Simon I, King of Georgia. Yedikule Fortress has been a museum since 1895, later on we will go into details about visiting possibilities.
In order to understand the origins of this citadel we have to go back to Roman times, more precisely to AD 390, when Theodosius I erected a triumphal arch which at that time stood by itself because the city walls had not been built yet. The name of this arch was Porta Aurea (Golden Gate), which travelers described as “glittering with gold”. When Theodosius II decided to extend the city walls two decades later he incorporated the Golden Gate within his new land walls. On many occasions this Golden Gate became the scene of triumphal entries by Byzantine emperors: Heraclius (629) after defeating the Persians; Constantine V, Basil I and Basil II (VIIIth century) after the victories over the Bulgars; and Theophilus and his son Michael III (IXth century) after their victories over the Arabs. The last triumphal entrance was the one of Michael VIII Palaeologus (1261), who recaptured the city from the Latins after the Fourth Crusade. Then in a context of continuous defeat, the Golden Gate was walled up for defense, never again to open.
In 1457, four years after the conquest, Mehmet II started a program of architectural reconstruction, replacing the former Byzantine legacy as an attempt of legitimation. For instance, Topkapı Palace was built on the exact place of the Byzantine acropolis and Hagia Sophia was transformed into a mosque. In the same line, Yedikule Fortress was built on the premises of the Golden Gate in the Theodosian Walls.
The darkest side of the history of Yedikule Fortress is related to its use as dungeon for the internal and external political enemies of the Sultanate. Among many others we can stand out the execution of David of Trebizond (1463), the last member of the Komnenos family and last emperor of Trebizond; the execution of Simon I the Great (1611), King of Georgia; the assassination of Sultan Osman II (1622), who dared to face the Janissaries with fatal consequences; and the Romanian prince Constantin Brancoveanu (1714), who was beheaded with his four sons and who has a memorial plaque since October 2013. Not less interesting are the inscriptions that can be seen on the walls made by the desperate foreign ambassadors in their hopeless days of confinement.
References
The history above is copied from the weloveistanbul site here.
Visitors information on the fortress is found on the atriptoistanbul site here.
Further history and some nice photos are on the castles.nl site here.