Yedikule Museum: Istanbul treasury and prison

This Istanbul museum is located in a place, which is marked in all Istanbul guidebooks. Threatening Yedikule fortress! It is preserved in excellent condition to this day and affects tourists with the height of its towers, solidity of walls and dark cellars, where the enemies of the Ottoman Empire were kept and the Sultans’ gold was stored...

A few words about the history of the museum building. Long time ago, in times of Constantinople, there was the very edge of the city, where the city gates were located. They were called the Golden Gates. It was the dream of all conquerors going to Istanbul to break through them into the city. It is known that the leaders of the Slavic tribes in the 9th century and Arabic in the 7th - besieged the city and left with ransom. Before leaving the city, the barbarians - as they were called by proud Byzantines - nailed their shields over the gates of the city. All this happened here, in Yedikule, and those walls have seen a lot of people and ages...

The Golden Gates, despite of grandiose name, represented a rather modest-looking building made of marble - the so-called triumphal arch, which had a little secret. Two of its wings, glittering with gold, were made of... brass. It shone like gold, so the gate was called Golden. Of course, even the brass didn’t survive till nowadays. Next to these gates there are still located the so-called Small gates.

Yedikule history began long after the Ottoman conquerors entered the city through these very gates. The Sultans, concerned about the weak walls of the city (they knew where the defense was the weakest), decided to build here not just the walls, but the whole castle. And they did it. The fortress with seven towers and a big yard was built in a few years. They’ve also bricked the Golden Gates because of a superstition: the subjugated Greeks believed the liberator of Byzantium will enter the city through this gate.

What can one find in this 7-tower fortress ("Yedikule" from Turkish) today? First, one of the towers still has dark dungeons where the Sultans’ prisoners were kept. Looking at the dark rooms with no daylight, the walls, covered with Turkish, Slavic, Greek, Arabic writings for almost five hundred years, one can understand the depth of sufferings of these unfortunates... At Yedikule Museum in Istanbul tourists can find different instruments of torture for prisoners. In comparison with the local collection even instruments of the inquisition seem "pale"...

Secondly, in the other tower of the castle they kept the treasury. It is hard to believe, but the tower - a well thirty meters high and twenty meters in diameter - was completely filled with gold and precious stones.

Walking across Yedikule, you will learn that in the 19 century this terrible place was changed into a simple warehouse, and then... into the zoo. At the end of the sixties the history of Yedikule castle ends and the story of Yedikule Museum begins. The courtyard of the museum is constantly used for concerts, festivals and fashion shows. During the concerts the music must not exceed a certain level. The prohibition applies to overly loud decibels from damaging the ancient stonework of the castle.

Yedikule Museum is open daily from 09:00 to 16:30, except Wednesday. Ticket price is 10 YTL, about $6.