Çiçek Pasajı & the Gate of Galatasaray
Why is it significant?
Stand in the small square at Galatasaray and look at the two faces it shows you. On one side, the tall gilded iron gate of a school, with its old trees behind. On the other, a grand stone façade with an arched entrance into a glass-roofed passage, its tables and lamps spilling out.
Key Facts
| Place | Çiçek Pasajı & the Gate of Galatasaray |
|---|---|
| Address | Hüseyinağa, İstiklal Caddesi, Galatasaray, Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.03410, 28.97790 |
| Part of Walk | Across the Golden Horn: Hidden Galata and Pera, Istanbul |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the small square at Galatasaray and look at the two faces it shows you. On one side, the tall gilded iron gate of a school, with its old trees behind. On the other, a grand stone façade with an arched entrance into a glass-roofed passage, its tables and lamps spilling out.
The passage is the Çiçek Pasajı, the Flower Passage, built in 1876 as the Cité de Péra, a block of shops and apartments on the site of a theatre that had burned down. Its name came later. After the Russian Revolution, refugees from the old empire poured into İstanbul, and it is said that impoverished émigré women sold flowers here, among them, according to legend, aristocrats with grand names. The flower sellers are gone. The name stayed. Inside, under the glass roof, the old taverns serve meze and rakı to a soundtrack of clinking glasses.
It almost did not survive. In 1978 part of the building collapsed, and it took a decade of restoration before the passage reopened in 1988. Look up at the façade, and you will see how much of Pera's grand nineteenth-century ambition was saved by that work.
Now turn to the gate. Galatasaray High School traces its origins to 1481, when Sultan Bayezid II founded a palace school here to train boys for the service of the empire. In 1868 it was refounded as the Mekteb-i Sultani, the Imperial School, teaching in French, and for generations it shaped the diplomats, writers and politicians of Turkey. In 1905 a group of its students founded a football club, and named it after their school. Today half the country cheers for it.
So here the walk ends, in a square where a medieval palace school, a Parisian-style passage and a football legend all meet. You came up from the fishermen on the bridge, through the vaults of a crusader-era castle, a Gothic church, a dervish garden and a grand hotel. Sit down, order a tea or a rakı, and let Pera carry on around you.