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 s ...

quarter separating the

Golden Horn The Golden Horn ( or ) is a major urban waterway and the primary inlet of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. As a natural estuary that connects with the Bosphorus Strait at the point where the strait meets the Sea of Marmara, the waters of the ...

and the

Sea of Marmara The Sea of Marmara, also known as the Sea of Marmora or the Marmara Sea, is a small inland sea entirely within the borders of Turkey. It links the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea via the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, separating Turkey's E ...

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

, Turkey. The area is where the

Topkapı Palace The Topkapı Palace (; ), or the Seraglio, is a large museum and library in the east of the Fatih List of districts of Istanbul, district of Istanbul in Turkey. From the 1460s to the completion of Dolmabahçe Palace in 1856, it served as the ad ...

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. It includes buildings and structures such as the Saray ...

, added to the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage List World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritag ...

in 1985.

History

The first settlement on the Sarayburnu goes back to

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

, 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 Neolithi ...

, was founded by

Thracian The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared between north-eastern Greece, ...

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

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

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 Byzantium () or Byzantion () was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' continued to be used as a n ...

, 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: 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 of all kno ...

settlers from

Megara Megara (; , ) 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 Island, Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken ...

(near Athens) under the command of King

Byzas Byzas (Ancient Greek: Βύζας, ''Býzas'') was the legendary founder of Byzantium (Ancient Greek: Βυζάντιον, ''Byzántion''), the city later known as Constantinople and then Istanbul. Background The legendary history of the founding ...

established Byzantium at the Sarayburnu. Previously, in 685 BC, the Megarans had established

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

(present-day

Kadıköy Kadıköy () is a municipality and Districts of Turkey, district on the Asian side of Istanbul Province, Istanbul Province, Turkey. Its area is 25 km2, and its population is 467,919 (2023). It is a large and populous area in the Asian si ...

) on the

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

n shore, across the

Bosporus The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental bo ...

. 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 Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

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

Phoenicians Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syrian coast. They developed a maritime civi ...

(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. In the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine period, the area was known as Prosphorion Harbour, Prosphorion ().Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 57 The neighborhood b ...

and

Eminönü Eminönü, historically known as Pérama, is a predominantly commercial waterfront area of Istanbul within the Fatih district near the confluence of the Golden Horn with the southern entrance of the Bosphorus strait and the Sea of Marmara. It is l ...

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 known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

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 (), who were all members of the Ottoman dynasty (House of Osman), ruled over the Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental empire from its perceived inception in 1299 to Dissolution of the Ottoman Em ...

. 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 (UMMA) is one of the largest university art museums in the United States, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with . Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alu ...

"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 (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

{{Fatih, Istanbul Quarters of Fatih Golden Horn

History

See also

References

External links