Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [173]
CHRIS HELLIER, a journalist and photographer, is the author and cophotographer of Splendors of Istanbul: Houses and Palaces Along the Bosphorus (Abbeville, 1993) and Monasteries of Greece (Tauris Parke, 1996). Hellier is Provence-based but has also lived in Turkey, India, and Madagascar, and his work has appeared in Time, The Independent on Sunday, and The Sunday Times, among others. Hellier contributes frequently to Geographical and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
[A] glimpse of a perfect ceiling is to be caught by any one who rows up the Asiatic shore [of the Bosporus] from Anadolu Hisar.… This ceiling, and the whole room to which it belongs, is the most precious thing of its kind in all Constantinople, if not in all the world.
THAT WAS how American writer H.G. Dwight in 1907 described what is today the oldest surviving yalı (yalı-lih), the home of Köprülü Amcazâde Hüseyin Pasha, who served as grand vizier under the Ottoman sultan Mustafa II in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Though its terra-cotta-rose paint has long since faded and its timbers have grown weary, the grand house still stands on the Bosporus shore, one of the several dozen remaining yalıs of the former Ottoman elite.
It was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when the Empire stretched from Mecca to Budapest and from Tunis to Tabriz, that it became fashionable for Ottoman viziers, admirals, and civil and military pashas to build prestigious summer homes along the Bosporus, the strait that separates Europe and Asia. These homes were called yalıs, a word deriving from the Greek yialos, or seashore.
Like the Newport “cottages” of the American elite in the late nineteenth century, yalıs in their time functioned as extravagant retreats where the owners and their families escaped the sweltering bustle of the city. Today, however, Istanbul’s remaining Yalıs are glimpses into Ottoman high culture across more than two centuries, and the social standing of their owners gave these homes important roles in society, politics, and architecture.
Only a handful of the earliest Yalıs still stand. These were invariably built of timber and roofed with red tile. The exterior walls were stained a deep earth-toned red, known as “Ottoman rose,” which made the facades stand out against the forested slopes with their pink cherry blossoms, green-leafed chestnuts, and slim, dark cypresses. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the increasing popularity of European tastes led to the supplanting of the traditional red facade by pastel shades.
The arrangement of rooms within each yalı harks back to the earliest Turkish houses that, like the Turks themselves, can be traced to Central Asia. From the sofa, or central salon, where a freestanding fountain cooled the summer heat, internal doors typically led into four corner rooms.
The cruciform central hall often included one or more recessed sitting areas that overhung the Bosporus waters, thus affording unobstructed views. Here, members of the household received their guests.
Like all larger Ottoman houses, yalıs were divided into a selamlık for the men and a haremlik for the women—though the women’s side was sometimes a separate building. Each yalı also had its hamam, or bath, often made of marble, which was divided into steam and cool rooms. Men and women used the hamam at different, designated times of the week.
Upper-class ladies often spent summer days on excursions in the gardens and the extensive grounds that surrounded nearly all yalıs on the landward side. Enclosed footbridges, known as “privacy bridges,” often spanned the narrow access road behind each house and connected the enclosed gardens with the forested grounds, allowing the women of the household private passage to the grounds. Over the last century, road-widening projects have torn down all but one of these.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the number of yal