İstanbul's forgotten art nouveau heritage

Of course when people think of İstanbul, the buildings that immediately leap to mind are those associated with the Byzantines (Hagia Sophia, the Yerebatan Cistern) or the Ottomans (Topkapı Palace, Sultanahmet Cami [the Blue Mosque], the Süleymaniye complex). But as with most cities with long histories tailing them, İstanbul is a palimpsest on which every generation has left its mark. There's something here from every era for those with the time and inclination to hunt it out.

Take art nouveau, for example. This is a wonderful, flamboyant style of turn-of-the-20th-century architecture most strongly associated in its different forms with France, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Italy. But İstanbul too has its art nouveau legacy, much of it concentrated in Beyoğlu, Sirkeci, Bebek, Arnavutköy and Büyükada, but with the odd stray in Çamlıca, Tarabya, Yeniköy and Çubuklu, too.

The best place to set out on an exploration of art nouveau in İstanbul is the Galata/Tünel end of İstiklal Caddesi in what is now Beyoğlu but was once Pera, the part of town where the ambassadors and foreign merchants lived until the founding of the Turkish Republic. Like most of İstanbul, Pera was originally furnished with wooden houses, but a sequence of fires, most disastrously in 1870, led to a decision that all new buildings should be in stone. It was this more than anything else that threw open the doors for the modish European style to infiltrate the area.

Architect Raimondo d'Aronco was first off the drawing board. Born in Italy in 1857, d'Aronco arrived in İstanbul in 1893 to work on designs for a planned İstanbul exhibition of agriculture and industry that never materialized after a terrible earthquake struck the city in 1894. Fortunately, by then he'd caught the eye of Sultan Abdülhamid II, who employed him to restore some of the damaged buildings. Between 1900 and 1901, he built a house for the sultan's tailor, Jean Botter, which was the city's first art nouveau structure. Today it still stands beside the Swedish Consulate, a soot-blackened, crumbling shell of a building festooned with gorgeous stone roses, giant sphinx-like heads and wonderful wrought ironwork that includes dramatic protruding flowers. Inside, even the windows contain stained-glass roses, although most are now cracked and filthy. It's a crying shame that it hasn't been restored to its original splendor.

Not far from the Casa Botter is another suffering art nouveau gem. The Markiz Pastanesi was a favorite meeting place for the late 19th century chattering classes. It belonged to a man named Lebon who was brother-in-law to the Levantine architect Alexander Vallaury, the man responsible for the nearby Pera Palas Hotel. Today what was once a stylish café with a whiff of Vienna about it has been turned into a fast food café called the Yemek Kulübü. Pop inside for a cut-price bowl of soup and you'll be able to admire two wonderful ceramic panels depicting spring and autumn that look as if they must be works of Mucha but were in fact by the French ceramicist J.A. Arnoux.

A little further along İstiklal Caddesi is another forgotten art nouveau gem: the interior of the Mudo Pera shop, which still retains its original wooden cabinets and galleries. Keep heading along İstiklal Caddesi towards the Galatasaray Lisesi (high school) and you will pass on the right the vast Mısır apartment block that houses on its top floor the trendy 360 restaurant. This was designed by the Armenian Hovsep Aznavuryan, one of only a handful of architects at work at this time whose name is known to us. Although not pure art nouveau, it still carries enough of its characteristics to warrant a mention.

Once you know what you're looking for, it's not hard to spot the classic features of nouveau İstanbul-style in the clusters of stylized flowers carved on facades and the swirling, circular designs on wrought-iron balconies, window grilles and metal doors. To modern visitors, these look very attractive. However, at the time they were a novelty that didn't find approval with everyone. There were probably as many complaints at the turn of the 20th century about the new high-rise apartment blocks and their tiny interior spaces as there are today about the even higher-rise concrete apartment blocks; and it turns out that then, as now, many of the new stone buildings were thrown up as investment properties by speculators who wanted to spend as little as possible on them, hence the fact that the art nouveau trimmings tend to be strictly façade-deep only.

Yet more fine examples of the style can be found in the narrow streets running off İstiklal Caddesi, including the fine Ferah apartment block at the junction of Mis and Kurabiye Sokaks. If you cut down İskender Caddesi to Şişhane Meydanı (square), you will also be able to inspect the elaborate Frej apartment block designed by the Greek Konstantinos Kyriakidis, another of the rare architects whose name has come down to us. Finally, for those who enjoy the quirky, a stroll down Şair Ziya Paşa Caddesi behind the Galata Tower will bring you to the Laleli Çeşme (tulip fountain), the only art nouveau fountain in the city and designed inevitably by d'Aronco.

There are yet more wonderful art nouveau apartment blocks to be found on Gümüşsuyu (İnönü) Caddesi as you stroll down toward the Beşiktaş soccer stadium. These include the extraordinary Gümüşsuyu Palas, a vibrant, 3D extravaganza of a building. Almost unbelievably, the name of the architect who created it is unknown.

To see some of the most impressive examples of art nouveau, you need to venture a little further afield. Off Barbaros Bulvarı in Beşiktaş, for example, you might like to look at d'Aronco's newly restored, one-off shrine to Şeyh Muhammed Zafir, the spiritual advisor to Sultan Abdülhamid II, in which a library, fountain and dervish lodge pool elements of art nouveau and Ottoman revival architecture. Or you can head up the Bosporus to Bebek and admire the art nouveau turrets on the enormous palace built for the khedive of Egypt's mother. Across the other side of the Bosporus, the Hidiv Kasrı (Khedive's Villa) at Çubuklu, with its distinctive tower, doesn't have any obvious external link with art nouveau. Inside, however, it retains a period fountain as well as some delightful tiles in the restrooms. Closer to Sultanahmet, you can stand on the steps of the Büyük Postane (main post office) in Sirkeci and admire the delightful Vlora Han filling the junction between two streets and sadly blackened despite the lovely stone roses that gamble across its façade.

Art nouveau is usually thought of as a style of architecture appropriate to stone buildings, but Turkey, with its long tradition of wooden houses, soon found a way to adapt it to local needs. Some of the finest of all İstanbul's art nouveau buildings are those that line the waterfront at Arnavutköy. Ironically these lovely houses that now look so individual appear to have been built using ready-made window and doorframes that could be fitted by local builders without the need for expensive architects.

Nor is that the sum of it. In summer, no exploration of art nouveau İstanbul would be complete without a boat ride out to Büyükada, where, on Çankaya Caddesi, you will be able to pick out yet more wonderful wooden carvings and wrought-iron balconies. Or you can head up the Bosporus to Tarabya, where the summer residence of the Italian Embassy was built in grand art nouveau style.

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 Mısır Apartment

 Vlora Han

Şeyh Zafir Shrine

Botter Apartment