Beyazıt Square & Istanbul University Gate
The Istanbul University Gate at Beyazıt Square in Istanbul was designed in 1867 by French architect Marie-Auguste Antoine Bourgeois as the monumental entrance for the Ottoman Ministry of War. Located on the former 4th-century Forum of Theodosius, the square also houses the 85-meter-tall stone Beyazıt Tower built by Senekerim Balyan in 1828, which still lights up in different colors to signal weather forecasts.
Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~4 min · Generated
İstanbul Üniversitesi Ana Kapısı, Beyazıt Meydanı No:1, Fatih, İstanbul
- Emperor Theodosius I grandly remodeled the Forum of Theodosius at Beyazıt Square in 393.
- French architect Marie-Auguste Antoine Bourgeois designed the grand Istanbul University Gate in 1867 for the Ministry of War.
- Senekerim Balyan built the 85-meter-tall stone Beyazıt Tower in 1828 after three wooden watchtowers were destroyed.
- Beyazıt Tower features 256 steps and uses colored lights to forecast clear weather, rain, fog, or snow.
What was the Istanbul University Gate at Beyazıt Square originally built for in 1867?
Look at this magnificent gate before you... the grand entrance to Istanbul University. But this is no ordinary campus entrance. Did you know that you're standing on ground that has served as a center of power for nearly two Thousand years?......... Long before the Ottomans arrived, this very square was the Forum of Theodosius... probably the Largest public square in all of Constantinople. Built by Constantine the Great and then grandly remodeled by Emperor Theodosius the First in three ninety-three, it was designed to rival Trajan's Forum back in Rome. There was a towering marble column with spiral reliefs, and a triple triumphal arch topped with statues of the emperor and his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. If you look carefully around Beyazit Square today, you can still find fragments of that ancient arch... carved from marble quarried on Marmara Island.......... After the Ottoman conquest in fourteen fifty-three, Sultan Mehmed the Second built his First palace right here... years before Topkapi was even imagined. They called it the Old Palace.......... Now, this grand gate you see was designed in eighteen sixty-seven by the French architect Marie-Auguste Antoine Bourgeois... not for students, but for the Ottoman Ministry of War. Generals and commanders marched through these arches.......... And that tower rising behind it? That's the Beyazit Tower, and its story is almost comical. The first wooden watchtower, built in seventeen forty-nine, burned down in the Great Cibali Fire of seventeen fifty-six. A fire watchtower... destroyed by Fire! They built another wooden one, but the Janissaries tore it down during the chaos of eighteen twenty-six, when Sultan Mahmud the Second dissolved their corps. A Third wooden tower went up that same year, designed by architect Krikor Balyan... and the Janissary loyalists burned That one too.......... Finally, Krikor's brother, Senekerim Balyan, had the wisdom to build it in Stone in eighteen twenty-eight. The tower stands eighty-five meters tall, with two hundred and fifty-six steps to the top. From up there, watchmen could see the entire old city, the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus, even the Princes' Islands. During the day, they lowered baskets to signal a fire's location. At night... colored lamps. And from across the water, the Icadiye Tower would fire Seven cannon volleys to wake the citizens.......... Even today, the tower glows with colored lights... blue for clear skies, green for rain, yellow for fog, and red for snow. Twenty firefighters once manned this tower around the clock until nineteen twenty-three. Now just two remain, keeping the ancient watch alive.