Yeraltı Camii: The Underground Mosque
Why is it significant?
Go down the few steps and let your eyes adjust. The ceiling is so low you could almost touch it, and the room is a forest of thick, squat pillars holding up heavy brick vaults. Carpets cover the floor, a few lamps glow, and the street noise has vanished.
Key Facts
| Place | Yeraltı Camii: The Underground Mosque |
|---|---|
| Address | Kemankeş Karamustafa Paşa, Kemankeş Caddesi, Karaköy, Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.02240, 28.97660 |
| Part of Walk | Across the Golden Horn: Hidden Galata and Pera, Istanbul |
| Generated | Generated |
Go down the few steps and let your eyes adjust. The ceiling is so low you could almost touch it, and the room is a forest of thick, squat pillars holding up heavy brick vaults. Carpets cover the floor, a few lamps glow, and the street noise has vanished.
This is the Yeraltı Camii, the Underground Mosque. These vaults are generally thought to be the basement of the Byzantine Castle of Galata, the fortress that guarded the northern end of the most famous barrier in the city: a great iron chain, stretched across the mouth of the Golden Horn on floating timbers, to keep enemy fleets out of the harbour.
The chain worked, mostly. In 1204 the knights of the Fourth Crusade stormed this castle and broke it, and the city fell to them. In 1453 the chain held, and Mehmed II solved the problem in another way: his men dragged dozens of ships overland, on greased logs, across the hills behind Galata, and launched them into the Golden Horn behind the chain. Imagine the defenders waking up to see warships where no ships could be.
Now walk to the tombs at the side, behind their green cloths. Legend says that here lie two Arab warriors, Abu Sufyan and Amiri Wahbi, who fell during the early Arab sieges of Constantinople in the seventh and eighth centuries. The story goes that a holy man saw their resting place in a dream, and in the eighteenth century the dark vaults were cleaned out and turned into a mosque around them.
So in one cellar you have a crusader conquest, an Ottoman conquest, and a legend from the first Arab fleets. Not bad for a room most people walk past on the way to a coffee. Come back out into the light, walk back past the end of the bridge, and keep going west through the busy hardware lanes of Karaköy. Look up for a tall square tower that looks as if it has strayed in from Italy.