Sarayburnu ( tr, Sarayburnu, meaning ''Palace Cape''; known in English as the Seraglio Point) is a

promontory A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the soft ...

quarter separating the

Golden Horn The Golden Horn ( tr, Altın Boynuz or ''Haliç''; grc, Χρυσόκερας, ''Chrysókeras''; la, Sinus Ceratinus) is a major urban waterway and the primary inlet of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. As a natural estuary that connects with t ...

and the

Sea of Marmara The Sea of Marmara,; grc, Προποντίς, Προποντίδα, Propontís, Propontída also known as the Marmara Sea, is an inland sea located entirely within the borders of Turkey. It connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea via the ...

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

, Turkey. The area is where the renowned

Topkapı Palace The Topkapı Palace ( tr, Topkapı Sarayı; ota, طوپقپو سرايى, ṭopḳapu sarāyı, lit=cannon gate palace), or the Seraglio, is a large museum in the east of the Fatih district of Istanbul in Turkey. From the 1460s to the complet ...

and Gülhane Park stand. Sarayburnu is included in the

historic areas of Istanbul The Historic Areas of Istanbul are a group of sites in the capital district of Fatih in the city of Istanbul, Turkey. These areas were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. This World Heritage Site includes buildings and structures su ...

, added to the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. I ...

World Heritage List A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

in 1985.

History

The first settlement on the Sarayburnu goes back to

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several part ...

, c. 6600 BC. The settlement lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by the rising level of the sea; however, it might have been moved further inland. The artifacts from this settlement recovered during excavations display some of the distinct features of other artifacts found in other excavations in northwestern Turkey. Another settlement on the Sarayburnu, named

Lygos Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolith ...

, was founded by

Thracian The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied ...

tribes between the 13th and 11th centuries BC, along with the neighbouring Semistra, which

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ...

had mentioned in his historical accounts. Only a few walls and substructures belonging to Lygos have survived to date, near the location where the famous

now stands. During the period of ancient Byzantium, the

Acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, ...

used to stand where the Topkapı Palace stands today. According to a legend, in 667 BC ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

settlers from

Megara Megara (; el, Μέγαρα, ) is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken ...

(near Athens) under the command of King Byzas established Byzantium at the Sarayburnu. Previously, in 685 BC, the Megarans had established

Chalcedon Chalcedon ( or ; , sometimes transliterated as ''Chalkedon'') was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor. It was located almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari (modern Üsküdar) and it is now a district of the c ...

(present-day

Kadıköy Kadıköy (), known in classical antiquity and during the Roman and Byzantine eras as Chalcedon ( gr, Χαλκηδών), is a large, populous, and cosmopolitan district in the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey, on the northern shore of the Sea of ...

) on the

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The r ...

n shore, across the

Bosporus The Bosporus Strait (; grc, Βόσπορος ; tr, İstanbul Boğazı 'Istanbul strait', colloquially ''Boğaz'') or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern T ...

. Actually the oldest settlements in present-day Istanbul are found on the Anatolian side; such as the Fikirtepe mound which dates from the

Chalcolithic The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', " copper" and ''líthos'', " stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin ''aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regul ...

period (Copper Age), with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BC. In nearby Kadıköy (ancient Chalcedon), a large port settlement dating from the

Phoenicians Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their hist ...

(which predates the Megaran settlement) has been discovered. In antiquity there were two natural harbours in the area close to Sarayburnu where the present-day

Sirkeci Sirkeci () is a neighborhood in the Eminönü quarter of the Fatih district in Istanbul, Turkey. The neighborhood borders to the north the mouth of the Golden Horn, to the west the neighborhood of Bahçekapı, to the east the Topkapı Palace ...

and Eminönü quarters stand (the harbours of Prosphorion and Neorion, which scooped into the coastline of the

.) Because of this formation, the point of Sarayburnu was more conspicuous than it is today. In later periods the area was the convergence point for the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn and the

. In the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...

period, the area was known in

as Hagios Demetrios. During the railway construction of the late Ottoman period, in 1871, the city walls of the Sarayburnu area were partially demolished, but they are still intact in some areas - especially close to the Topkapı Palace, which was built in the 15th century for the

Ottoman Sultans The sultans of the Ottoman Empire ( tr, Osmanlı padişahları), who were all members of the Ottoman dynasty (House of Osman), ruled over the transcontinental empire from its perceived inception in 1299 to its dissolution in 1922. At its he ...

. The notable Gülhane Park is located right next to the palace.

References

External links

* Turizm.net
''Brief history of Istanbul''
* Köroğlu, Gülgün. ''İstanbul'daki Bizans İmparatorluk Sarayları''. OB Archive & Research Center, 2006.
"La Pointe du Sérai" albumen print
by J. Pascal Sébah and Joaillier, at the

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall or ...

"The Gardens of the Seraglio with European visitors inspecting the Column of the Goths, Constantinople" painting
at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and ...

{{Fatih, Istanbul Quarters of Fatih Golden Horn

History

See also

References

External links