Nineteenth-Century Conservation of Byzantine Heritage in the Ottoman Empire: The Significance of the 1893 Istanbul Historic Peninsula Fortification Map

Abstract

ABSTRACT City walls are essential urban elements contributing to the identity of historical cities. Their significance as a component of a city’s image is reflected on historical city maps, revealing the physical traces of urban history. The Istanbul Historic Peninsula, a multi-layered historical city centre surrounded by Byzantine-period walls, has been represented on different maps and drawings by Ottoman and foreign experts ever since the fifteenth century. One of the first architectural documentation studies focusing on these city walls is the Historic Peninsula Fortification (HPF) Map, dated 1893. Archival and literature research shows that the map is a copy of the Nineteenth-Century Istanbul Map, also called the Ayverdi Map. In this paper, we discuss the value of the 1893 Istanbul HPF Map as a historical document, its properties, and its historical and cultural significance for documenting the city walls for conservation purposes in the Ottoman period.