Italian and European history trampled on in Turkey: devastating renovations to Galata Tower

It is not only the conversion of St. Sophia into a mosque that holds sway when it comes to today’s complicated relations between Turkey and cultural heritage. In fact, it is of the last hours the news of very heavy interventions on the Galata Tower, which is not only one of the most famous and visited monuments in Istanbul, but is also a piece of Italian history in the Turkish city. The Tower of Galata is, in fact, one of the most vivid reminders of the cosmopolitanism of 14th-century Genoa, as well as of its dominance over the Mediterranean: the building was in fact constructed on the remains of pre-existing buildings in 1348 by the Genoese, who included it in a complex of fortresses to guard the village of Galata, a Genoese colony on the shores of the Bosporus. The tower, almost 67 meters high, has since been remodeled over the centuries (the conical roof, which a storm knocked down in the late 19th century, was rebuilt in the 1960s, with stone instead of wood), and put to different uses (today it even houses, on the upper floors, a restaurant and a nightclub). However, the structure is still basically the 14th-century one.

Recently, the Galata Tower underwent a change of ownership: in fact, it passed from the Istanbul Municipality to the central government, following a strong tug-of-war, since Turkey’s largest city is administered by a secular mayor, Ekrem Ä°mamoÄŸlu, a strong opponent of Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. A clash from which the government emerged victorious, and as soon as it got its hands on the Tower, the government planned to promote a “renovation” of the building, unveiled last June: the purpose of the work is to turn the Tower into a museum by eliminating activities incompatible with its historical essence.

However, an unmistakable video has been circulating on social media in recent days, dating back to last August 12, which shows some workers intent on knocking down a piece of the 14th-century wall with a jackhammer. The images sparked strong outrage in Turkey as well: the director of the cultural heritage department of the Istanbul Municipality, Mahir Polat, on the same August 12 posted a tweet with the video and a comment to denounce the incident: “I am addressing the authorities in charge,” he said, "to bring to their attention the shocking operations that are taking place at the Galata Tower, one of Istanbul’s most important historical monuments. A team from the city’s cultural heritage department has gone to the site to assess the situation and immediately stop these criminal activities."

Polat and his staff, however, were prevented from entering the building, so the engineer released documents showing that work on the tower began before a request for permission was submitted to the relevant body, the Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The request for permission, in fact, is said to have reached the Turkish counterpart of our superintendencies only on August 12, the day the video with workers at work on the tower’s 14th-century walls was published.

Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, following the barrage of criticism, said that “the accusations circulating on social media that ’the walls of the Galata Tower are collapsing’ are unfounded. The demolished parts are after the tower was built, and they were damaging the tower itself.” However, the minister condemned the crude methodologies used at the construction site and assured that the company that is handling the work will be appropriately sanctioned. Ersoy again let it be known that the government’s idea is to demolish the tower’s later additions-it would be part of the plan to convert the tower into a museum.

However, the risk that the tower will still be damaged is great. On Aug. 13, Oktay Özel, director of cultural projects for the Istanbul Municipality, told the Milliyet newspaper that vibrations from jackhammers could jeopardize the tower’s state of preservation, as they are a totally unsuitable medium for a historic building. Also on Aug. 13, an opposition parliamentarian, Turan Aydogan, brought the case to Parliament, recalling that several sites in Turkey have suffered irreparable damage precisely during “restorations”: and one of these precedents also has to do with Genoa’s history in the Mediterranean. It is the Genoese fortress on the island of Ocakli, a site in ruins, whose appearance, however, has been completely disrupted by the restorations, disfigured to the point of making the ancient construction unrecognizable(we had also reported on Windows on Art).

In Italy the news went basically unnoticed: the only newspaper that has dealt with it so far has been Genoa’s Il Secolo XIX, in an article signed by art historian Giacomo Montanari, who condemns “the act of vandalism perpetrated against the Tower of Galata,” and calls it “an attack on the cultural roots of Europe as a whole, a disfigurement to a monument that is unique in the world and that (hoping that this dastardly operation will not continue any further) will certainly never return no longer as the centuries had delivered it to us.” Without Genoa’s presence in the Mediterranean, “the great classical sculptures that adorned during the Renaissance and the Italian courts, the Greek codices that dotted the libraries of the humanists, the precious stones, the cameos [...] would not have come from the East, since they traveled on Genoese ships in an interweaving of routes, trades, cultures and riches that constituted the world that we now consider a cultural homeland.” This is therefore why such devastating works are also a blow to the history of Italy and Europe.

The Galata Tower in the Istanbul skyline. Ph. Credit

Italian and European history trampled on in Turkey: devastating renovations to Galata Tower

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