A Century of Witnessing: Pera

Aslı Balkan Erçelik

The second chapter of the series focuses on vitruta Pera. The opposite shore, a corridor of passage, a modern avenue. To understand the area we now know as Şişhane, we first turn to the legacy of maps.

Because this story is not primarily about a neighborhood but about a position. In Byzantine sources, every narrative and map related to this area brings up the name Pera. Meaning “the other side” in Greek, Pera was not a settlement with fixed borders as we know today but a geographical expression describing the far side of the Golden Horn. On Byzantine maps, while the walled city appears as the center, the opposite shore is named Pera and shown as vineyards, cemeteries, and military or logistical open zones.

In 1422, the Florentine cleric and traveler Christoforo Buondelmonte documented what he saw through hand drawn sketches, depicting Galata Pera only up to the settled area around Galata Tower.

During the Ottoman period, the area now known as Şişhane was referred to as “Şeşhane,” a name derived from the cannon foundries and ammunition production facilities located there.

Initially shaped as a technical zone tied to military production, the area gradually evolved into a residential and commercial fabric. Owing to its geography as a natural transition point between Galata and Pera, Şişhane became a strategic and dynamic district from an early period.

A disaster that may be considered a major architectural turning point in the area’s history occurred in 1870. The Pera Fire, also recorded as the Great Beyoğlu Fire, which began on Feridiye Street, fundamentally altered the structure of the district.

Academic Zeynep Çelik interprets this process as turning Pera into “the Ottoman Empire’s modern urban laboratory.” The apartment fabric along today’s Meşrutiyet Caddesi and its surroundings is largely the result of the post fire reconstruction process. Wooden structures were restricted and a new urban plan was prepared. Newly built buildings carried Neo Classical and Art Nouveau influences. High ceilinged apartments and stone façades became defining elements of Pera’s present day silhouette. This catastrophe forced the crossing of a threshold in the area’s modernization.

Today, Meşrutiyet Caddesi stretching between Şişhane and Tepebaşı stands as a spatial record of Istanbul’s transformation since the nineteenth century. This avenue is one of the axes where the Ottoman Empire’s relationship with the West, constitutional thought, and the desire for urban scale modernization become visible.

The street took the name Meşrutiyet following the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908. This naming is directly linked to the political and ideological climate of the period. Before that, the street was known as an extension of Cadde i Kebir, the main avenue of Pera. This gesture signifies making the concept of constitutionalism visible in urban space, carrying the ideals of constitutional order, freedom, and representation into everyday life.