The Grand Bazaar is not only a historic center of trade but also a silent witness to the great disasters Istanbul has endured. Over the centuries, this unique marketplace has faced numerous fires and earthquakes, yet each time it has risen again. To understand its present-day architecture, one must look closely at these events from the past. Wooden Shops and Great Fires In earlier times, the streets and shops of the Grand Bazaar were mostly made of wood. For this reason, when

Zeytinburnu hosts some terrestrial part of Istanbul city walls which  holds a length of 22 kilometers in three zones in all. Terrestrial walls had been built in 4 years during the reign of Theodosius 2 and had finished on August 25, 413 located between Ayvansaray, a sea-neighborhood in Haliç, and Yedikule in the Marmara coast with a length of 5.5km. These walls contain 3 parts as inner walls, outer walls and the moat. The inner walls were about 5 meters wide, 20 meters high a

As one of Turkey’s oldest historical monuments, Hagia Sophia is centuries old. Profit Mohammed was not born when it was built. Originally, it was a Roman Greek church and used as a church 916 years. After Turkish people conquered Constantinople, it became a mosque and was used as a mosque for 481 years. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned the historical monument into a museum after the Turkish Republic was established. As it changed over the centuries, it went from a church to a mos