Rumeli Hisari

How many people can say that they live next to a castle? I know that in Europe, castles are no big whoop; if anything, they are suitable venues for clothing bazaars, concerts, Renaissance Fairs, or a McDonalds franchise (I have personally witnessed all of these in European castles). But for a citizen of America, where we consider something from the 1970's "vintage," living down the road from a 15th century castle is kind of a big deal. The name of this castle is Rumeli Hisari, which in Turkish literally means "Castle on the Roman (European) side (of the Bosphorous)." I guess they were not too creative with names back then. Rumeli Hisari is paired with another, smaller fortress directly across on the other shore, called Anadolu  Hisari, or "Castle on the Anatolian (Asian) side (of the Bosphorous)." Rumeli Hisari was built mid-1400s by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, just a few years before Mehmet, well, conquered Constantinople. Barricaded within their seemingly impenetrable walls in the Golden Horn, which, at that time, was all that was left of an enormous empire, the Byzantines proved frustratingly difficult to snuff out. So Mehmet decided to build this castle up on the Bosphorous to cut off the supply lines from the Black Sea to the Byzantines. This castle has 3 huge towers, all named after a different vizier of Sultan Mehmet. As the story goes, Mehmet was so eager to get Rumeli Hisari built quickly that he put three of his viziers in charge of building one of the 3 towers. Just to give them incentive, the vizier who finished his tower last would be executed. As a result, the castle was completed in a record 4 months. There is also a story that Mehmet was so eager to see the completion of the castle that he supervised construction personally, and occasionally pitched in and laid some stones himself. Who knows if these stories are actually true, but I find them amusing. The same thing apparently happened when they built the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur; the contractors intentionally hired a Japanese construction team to build tower 1 and a Korean team for tower 2, counting on mutual hatred and competition between the two nationalities to get the towers built as soon as possible. After the fall of Constantinople, the castles on either side of the Bosphorous became giant toll booths to collect taxes from merchant ships passing through the strait. After that, there was apparently a squatter village inside of the walls up until 70 years or so ago when the Istanbul municipality moved the families out and turned the castle into an open-air museum (i.e. place to put old cannons from WWI). 

I always pass the castle when I am going up and down the shore, but Jon and I decided to investigate further. We ran up and down A LOT of steps, managed not to fall off the parapets to an almost certain death, and took a few Facebook pictures for Jon, with the Bosphorous in the background. When we visited in the springtime, the castle was especially beautiful because the red blossoms of the Judas tree where in full bloom. A nice way to spend an afternoon!