Galata Tower

It was a new day in the city of Istanbul. It was actually my second day here and I finally got a good night’s sleep. I was very tired the previous day that I couldn’t fully appreciate the places that I was visiting. Hopefully, I would have a better mood today as I would be exploring another part of Istanbul. The city of Istanbul is actually split into two. There is the Asian side and there is the European side where I was. The two sides are separated by the Bosphorus strait. I know that just a few days in Istanbul won’t do it justice so I would only try to visit the most well known landmarks.

One of the places which I saw in an Turkish promotional material is this cylindrical tower which apparently is quite important. I have never seen this tower before so I thought it would be nice to pay it a visit. There is no direct metro station to go to but there would be one which is somewhere near it. I can imagine that it is very difficult to build underground infrastructure here in in Istanbul but because you will never know what you will find when you dig.

This area is a little high and it makes a perfect lookout point. Sure enough, there is a round tower here called the Galata Tower. It is a tower from the time of Emperor Justinian I. I actually thought it would from a more recent time but I had no idea it would be that old. I probably should have realized it because the architecture of the tower gives it away. The tower is topped by what appears to be Romananesque in style. The round arches are typical of this style. It was nice that the tower wasn’t razed to the ground when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. These days it is museum and one of Istanbul’s most visited places. You can tell because there are a lot of people here even this early in the morning. I didn’t want to spend time waiting in line to go up because I have a feeling that waiting here would take much longer than the lines going in the Hagia Sophia.

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