The Genoese wall under the metro bridge
- Martin
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
If you find yourself near the Haliç metro bridge by the Azapkapı exit on the Karaköy side, take a few minutes to experience something quiet - and, if you ask me, absolutely wild. Because right there, tucked away in the shadows under the metro bridge, stand a few fragments of a wall that most people mistake for a pile of random stones.
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Until early 2025, they were even hidden away behind aluminum sheets and looked mostly like a forgotten construction site. I’ve walked here for years, peering through the cracks in the fence. Back then, my tragic conclusion was that what I could see was doomed to disappear.
Which was a shame, because it is actually one of the most overlooked and raw details of Galata's medieval defense - from just before, during, and after the Ottomans took Constantine's old city on the other side of the Golden Horn.
The wall was built by the Genoese in the 1430s. If you step close, you can see an inscription plaque with three shields in the middle of the wall. The first shield is easy to recognize - it’s the cross of the Republic of Genoa.
The middle of the three shields has been chipped away. This likely happened in the years after 1453, once the Ottomans had taken power and systematically began removing Genoese coats of arms. It was the Ottomans' way of marking that there were new masters in town. But here on the ruins under the metro bridge, you can still make out the contour as a faint trace of what once was.
The third shield probably belongs to one of the powerful families in Galata, like the Spinolas or De Marinis. They were responsible for this exact area back when the wall was raised.
Just below the shields is a Latin text that briefly explains that the wall was built in 1435 and mentions "Domus Sancti Ephraemi" (The House of Saint Ephrem), which was an administrative unit. A kind of local government that held the budget and the responsibility for maintaining the wall.
For many years, several previous city administrations expressed a desire to level these ruins to the ground. But since 2019, the heritage experts from İBB Miras have worked to locate historical landmarks like this one. They secured the ruins, and in January 2025, the aluminum sheets were finally removed.
There were no opening speeches or festivities - they simply took the panels down, and there the wall stood again, exactly where it has stood for 600 years. On display for everyone who passes by now and in the future, with a bit of grass, some bushes, and greenery around it.
That’s the kind of thing that makes Istanbul interesting to me. Because history isn't really meant to sit in a glass display case; in Istanbul, it can just as easily stand like this - raw and undisturbed under a modern bridge - and that is exactly how history should remain.
