The Kamondo Steps & Bankalar Caddesi
Why is it significant?
Stand at the bottom of the staircase and follow it with your eyes as it climbs the slope in two curving flights, crossing and folding back on itself like a piece of ribbon, with little terraces where the curves meet.
Key Facts
| Place | The Kamondo Steps & Bankalar Caddesi |
|---|---|
| Address | Bankalar Caddesi, Karaköy, 34420 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.02400, 28.97380 |
| Part of Walk | Across the Golden Horn: Hidden Galata and Pera, Istanbul |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the bottom of the staircase and follow it with your eyes as it climbs the slope in two curving flights, crossing and folding back on itself like a piece of ribbon, with little terraces where the curves meet. It is a staircase, nothing more... and it is one of the most photographed places in the city.
Behind you runs Bankalar Caddesi, the Street of Banks. In the late nineteenth century this was the Wall Street of the Ottoman Empire. The grand stone building nearby, with its two faces, was the headquarters of the Ottoman Bank, designed by Alexandre Vallaury and opened in 1892. Bankers, brokers and money changers worked shoulder to shoulder here, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Levantine and Turkish.
The greatest of them was Abraham Salomon Camondo, head of a Sephardic Jewish banking family, sometimes called the Rothschild of the East. He helped finance the Ottoman state, founded modern schools for his community, and built whole blocks of Galata. The steps were built at his family's expense, probably in the 1870s. The story goes that he wanted his children to have a safe way down the hill... or that he simply wanted a quicker way from his house to his bank. Take your pick.
The family's ending is a sad one. The Camondos moved to Paris, where a grandson, Nissim, was killed as a pilot in 1917, and in the Second World War the last of the line, Béatrice de Camondo, was deported with her children and murdered at Auschwitz. Abraham Salomon himself, who died in Paris in 1873, was brought back to be buried in İstanbul, in the old Jewish cemetery at Hasköy on the Golden Horn.
Climb slowly and notice the shapes the shadows make. In 1964 the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson photographed these steps, and the picture made them famous far beyond Turkey. At the top, turn right, and the round stone tower is suddenly straight ahead, looming over the narrow street.