Along the Western Shore, from a Seaside Mansion to Sinan's Bridge

The Yeşilköy lighthouse is the historic light that ships coming from the Marmara meet as they head for the Bosphorus; according to Wikipedia, ships use it to set their course into the strait. It was built as a stone tower in 1856 by Michel Pasha, of French origin. Since Yeşilköy was called Ayastefanos until 1926, the lighthouse first bore that name and later took the quarter's new one. Beside the 23-metre tower there is a keeper's house, and the structure was restored three times between 1945 and 1988. The Yeşilköy article also records that the French, who settled here during the Crimean War, built one of Istanbul's three lighthouses on this spot.

The lighthouse stands on the Yeşilköy headland, and as a working navigational structure it is seen from outside, walking along the shore. Give yourself some time here, because Yeşilköy itself deserves a stop. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was a favourite seaside retreat of Istanbul's well-to-do families, and some remarkable timber Art Nouveau houses from that period can still be seen. The Treaty of San Stefano (Ayastefanos), which recorded the outcome of the Russo-Turkish War, was signed here in 1878. The name Yeşilköy is said to have been suggested by the novelist Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil.

Yeşilköy has a marina, a pier with summer boats to the Princes' Islands and sandy beaches. Take a short walk along the shore to see the lighthouse from different angles, then move on to the aviation museum; the two are very close.

Source: Wikipedia.

The Istanbul Air Force Museum stands next to the military airfield in Yeşilköy. The location makes sense: the city's first airfield opened here in 1912 as the Yeşilköy Air Field, and the museum's history names Yeşilköy as the place where the first air unit was founded. Turkey's first air museum opened on 15 May 1971 at Cumaovası in İzmir and, when that site proved unsuitable, moved to Yeşilköy. The building here was begun in 1977, finished in 1983, and the museum opened to visitors on 16 October 1985.

The museum covers 65,000 square metres, of which 2,365 square metres are indoor and 12,000 square metres outdoor display space. Various aircraft and helicopters used by the Turkish Air Force stand in the hangar and outdoors. The Memorial Hall displays belongings of people who shaped aviation history, the engine section shows propeller and jet engines, and the Uniforms Hall has examples of flying clothing from Ottoman aviators to the present. Outdoors, look for the Skytrain transport aircraft built in the United States in 1943; according to Wikipedia, 110 aircraft of this type entered the air force's inventory between 1946 and 1998. The German-built Dornier Do 28 liaison aircraft of 1970 is also one of the few of its kind left in Turkey.

The outdoor area is large, so an hour and a half passes easily here; bring a hat and water on sunny days and a windproof on windy ones. As the museum belongs to the Air Force and stands next to a military airfield, check opening days, hours and entry conditions before you go. With children, read the information boards next to the aircraft together; comparing which plane served in which years turns into a good game.

Source: Wikipedia.

The Florya Atatürk Marine Mansion stands about 70 metres offshore on piles driven into the seabed and is linked to land by a wooden pier. Prompted by Atatürk's fondness for the area, Istanbul Municipality commissioned the architect Seyfi Arkan; the mansion was completed in 1935 and presented to Atatürk on 14 August. It is regarded as one of the landmark buildings of early Republican architecture, and the English Wikipedia article describes it as Bauhaus in style. Inside are a reception hall, bedrooms, a bathroom and a library.

Atatürk used the mansion at intervals over three years as a summer working office, stayed here for long periods especially in June and July 1936, and made his last visit on 28 May 1938. It is said that while staying at Dolmabahçe he often came here by motorboat and swam in the sea together with the public. In later years the mansion was the summer residence of other presidents too; on 6 September 1988 it was handed over to the National Palaces Department of the Grand National Assembly, restored and turned into a museum.

Check before you go whether the mansion is open as a museum and on which days. Even if it is not, you can see from the shore how the pier and the mansion relate to the sea; Seyfi Arkan's plain, horizontal lines read better from across the water. The grove planted as the mansion's garden is now a public park called Florya Atatürk Kent Ormanı, and a short walk under its trees is a good way to follow the visit. Florya Marmaray station is about 500 metres away.

Source: Wikipedia; Wikipedia.

Lake Küçükçekmece is in fact a lagoon. It is separated from the sea by a shallow spit built up from sand and gravel carried along the coast; the outlet at its eastern end drains the lake's surplus into the Marmara, and when the sea rises, seawater flows into the lake. That is why its water is slightly salty. According to Wikipedia its name comes from the small rafts, or çekmece, that were pulled across by hand before there was a bridge.

The bridge crosses this outlet where the main road from Istanbul to the Balkans passes. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam there was probably a wooden bridge here in Roman times; after earthquakes damaged it in the 6th century, Emperor Justinian set it on a stone arch. Mehmed the Conqueror had it repaired in the winter of 1455. According to Evliya Çelebi the present bridge was begun under Süleyman the Magnificent and completed under Selim II. Sources are cautious about its architect: the bridge does not appear in the lists of Mimar Sinan's works, and Orhan Bozkurt, who studied Sinan's bridges, suggests it may be by Acem Ali, chief architect before Sinan. Western sources call it Ponte Piccolo, the little bridge, in comparison with the one at Büyükçekmece.

The bridge is 210 metres long and 7.60 metres wide, and its widest arch spans 10 metres. It was widened and levelled during the First World War and has largely lost its original form. Still, stop to look at the fountain at the bridgehead, the fishing boats moored nearby and the open water of the lake. Remains found on the lake's northwestern shore are thought by archaeologists to belong to Bathonea, a town known from written sources.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi; Wikipedia.

In the words of the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the Kanuni Sultan Süleyman Bridge at Büyükçekmece is one of the foremost monuments of Ottoman engineering. According to the article, the old Roman bridge lay further north inside the marsh and had been damaged by floods. Instead of building a short bridge and joining its ends to raised causeways, Mimar Sinan designed a long bridge stretching across the whole of the marshy ground and set further south on firm soil. For each pier he had cofferdams the size of a galleon prepared, piles driven into them and bound together with molten lead.

Construction began on Süleyman's orders; when the sultan died on the Szigetvár campaign, the bridge was completed by his son Selim II, and the inscriptions give the completion date as 975 (1567-68). The bridge is made of four sections of different lengths joined by artificial islets; it is about 636 metres long in total, a little over 7 metres wide and has 28 arches. The municipality notes that this width allowed two caravans coming from opposite directions to pass side by side. The unparapeted links between the sections are thought to have been left so that floodwater could pass over them without harming the bridge.

Look for two things as you walk. Above the widest arch there are stone benches for resting. At the head of one section, facing inscription kiosks carry Arabic and Turkish inscriptions; the words amel-i Yusuf b. Abdullah beside the Turkish one are, according to TDV, the only known signature of Sinan on any of his works. Main traffic now crosses on a modern bridge a little further on, and the historic bridge is relatively well preserved.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi; Büyükçekmece Belediyesi; Wikipedia.

In the small historic area at the head of the bridge, three buildings stand side by side. The Büyükçekmece Caravanserai, also known as Kurşunlu Han, takes its name from its lead-covered roof. According to Büyükçekmece Municipality's page on historic sites, the han was built in 1566 as an enclosed caravanserai without a courtyard; its walls alternate one course of cut stone with two courses of brick. The wide central space was for animals and loads, while travellers rested and slept in the side sections with hearths and niches in their walls. Wikipedia notes that an earlier caravanserai stood here in the time of Mehmed the Conqueror, that according to TDV the present building appears in the lists of Sinan's works, and that it was repaired by the General Directorate of Foundations in 1965-1966. Evliya Çelebi stayed here in 1659 on his way to Bosnia. The han was one of the staging posts on the road to the Balkans and today hosts cultural and artistic events.

Across from the han, all that remains of the Sokullu Mehmet Paşa Mosque is its minaret, a passage and a low wall. The mosque was built around 1567 for Sokullu Mehmed Paşa, Süleyman's grand vizier, and according to the municipality and Wikipedia its minaret stands out for having been carved from a single block of stone. Right beside it is the Sultan Süleyman Fountain, also dated 1566: a white marble structure 6 metres high with three wings, each carrying a fountain and decorated with pointed-arched niches.

Check the caravanserai's events on Büyükçekmece Municipality's culture and arts page. Before you leave, walk back to the head of the bridge once more and look at the lake; for centuries, caravans on the Balkan road stopped at exactly this staging post.

Source: Büyükçekmece Belediyesi; Wikipedia.