“With Candles”
Old names: Ekhia, Broktoi, Moltorino, Bosphorus Nikopolis
Far up the Bosphorus on its Asian shore, Kandilli is an upmarket neighbourhood that is home to several fine yalıs (waterside mansions) including the Kıbrıslı Yalısı (Cyprus Yalı), the longest such house on the strait. It’s also home to the fine Adile Sultan Palace, now a smart restaurant, and to the İstanbul Observatory, the place that has the unhappy task of keeping an ear out for earthquakes. It won’t mean much to non-watchers of Turkish soap operas but it’s also home to the Abud Efendi Yalısı which featured as Gümüs (Silver) in a programme that found particular favour in the Arab-speaking world, not least because of its handsome leading man, Kıvanç Tatlıdağ.
There are no major sights here but it’s a pretty – if hilly – suburb so if you’re coming this way to visit the Küçüksu Kasrı or the Khedive’s Villa at Çubuklu you might want to make a brief stop to have a look round.
The fastest flowing current on the Bosphorus passes in front of the Edip Efendi Yalısı at Kandilli. It’s suitably named Şeytan Akıntısı (Satan’s Current).
Around Kandilli
The Kibrıslı Yalısı is best appreciated from the decks of a Bosphorus ferry but the Abud Efendi Yalı, designed by Garabet Balyan, is usually open to the public on payment of a small fee.
A very steep street runs up from Kandilli İskelesi (ferry terminal) to the upper suburb where there are two 19th-century Greek Orthodox churches (Metamorphosis and Twelve Apostles) as well as a Greek cemetery. Here, too, there are some magnificent wooden houses on Sıraevler Sokagı (Rowhouse Street). Right at the top of the hill the erstwhile granite-walled home (1893) of David Glavany, a part-British man who founded the Ottoman Bank, had been allowed to fall into ruins but has now been restored to house a branch of the Nev Mekan string of cafe-libraries. Glavany’s initials appear over the gate along with the date of the house (1893). A fountain-filled garden at the back looks down on the rest of Kandilli.
The Adile Sultan Sarayı (Adile Sultan Palace) sits high on the hillside – you’re most likely to visit it if you fancy a meal at the branch of the upmarket eatery, Borsa, inside it. It’s another Balyan-built project, designed originally in the 1860s for the unlucky Adile Sultan (1826-98), a daughter of Sultan Mahmud II. In 1899 it was turned into Turkey’s second school for girls but burnt down in 1986. In 2006 the philanthropist Sakıp Sabancı paid for it to be rebuilt and a modern school now occupies the grounds. A small museum tells the story of some of the famous women who were educated here.
On İcadiye Hill, the Kandilli Rasathanesi (Kandilli Observatory) is now a branch of Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (Bosphorus University) and not open to the public which is a shame given that it has a memorable history, albeit on a variety of other sites (the story is told in the Museum of the History of Islamic Science and Technology in Gülhane Park). It has been standing on the current site since 1868.
Famous Western visitors Kandilli’s 18th- and 19th-century yalıs received more than their fair share of illustrious visitors. Pierre Loti was a guest at the Kont Ostorog Yalısı and the Kıbrıslı Yalısı while a British aristocrat named Dorina Lady Neave lived in the Clifton Yalısı from 1881 to 1907, leaving an account of her time there in a book called Romance of the Bosphorus. But the most famous of all the Kandilli visitors has to have been Casanova who visited İstanbul in 1745 and may have had a brief gay fling with the owner of what is often nicknamed the Casanova Yalısi on the hillside at Kandilli.
Eating
Kandilli Borsa. Classy restaurant where reservations are advisable. Magnificent views especially from terrace in summer. Tel: 0216-460 0304
Kandilli Suna’nın Yeri. Waterside fish restaurant. Tel: 0216-332 3241
Nev Mekan. Standard international repertoire of light meals. Tel: 0216-531 3000
Transport info
The nicest way to get here is via the timetabled ferry service from one of the other Bosphorus suburbs (https://www.sehirhatlari.istanbul/). Failing that, buses trundle slowly up the coast from Üsküdar.
Nearby areas
