The Galata Bridge crosses the mouth of the Golden Horn between Karaköy and Eminönü, joining the Beyoğlu side to the old city's busy square of Eminönü, with Yeni Cami and the Mısır Çarşısı. The present bridge is a bascule bridge 490 metres long, with an 80-metre section in the middle that can be raised; its 42-metre deck carries traffic lanes, a walkway and, down the middle, a tram line, which makes it one of the few bascule bridges anywhere with trams running over it. The level beneath the roadway, with its restaurants and shops, opened in 2003. Because it ties the newer city of Karaköy and Harbiye to the older one of Sultanahmet and Fatih, the bridge is often called a link between two cultures, and it has been the subject of many writers, painters and film directors.
People have tried to bridge this stretch of water for centuries. A bridge is believed to have been built in the Byzantine period, and an arched one is credited to the emperor Justinian in the sixth century, though nothing certain is known of where it stood or how it was made. During the siege of 1453 Mehmed II had a short-lived crossing thrown over the Golden Horn; historians disagree over whether it rested on linked water casks or on chained ships. Under Bayezid II the idea came up again: an approach to Michelangelo led nowhere, and Leonardo da Vinci, who wanted to build a bridge here, sent sketches that were judged impossible to carry out. Even in the late nineteenth century many İstanbul people still preferred to cross between the two shores by rowing boat.
The first Galata Bridge proper was a wooden one, built in 1845 by Bezm-i Alem Valide Sultan, the mother of Sultan Abdülmecid, and known as the Cisr-i Cedid, the new bridge. A toll was charged from the start, collected by uniformed officers at each end, and crossing only became free in 1930. Successors followed in 1863 and 1875. The bridge that most İstanbul residents remember was ordered from the German firm MAN in 1909 and opened with a grand ceremony on 27 April 1912: it floated on 28 pontoons, was 25 metres wide to leave room for trams, and had a 63.5-metre opening section in the middle. Small boats slipped through two openings in it, while large ships had to wait for it to open towards dawn. Waiting rooms, shops and gazinos filled its lower level, and small toll houses in Turkish neoclassical style stood at either end until the tolls ended. It served for eighty years, until a fire on 16 May 1992 put it out of use. A new bridge had been under discussion since the late 1980s, when the old one's age and its closely spaced pontoons were thought to be adding to the pollution of the Golden Horn. Built a few metres to the north, it was opened to traffic in June 1992, before it was finished, and completed in December 1994.
Getting there
The tram runs across the bridge, so either end is easy to reach. At the Eminönü end are the piers for the ferries to the Islands, Kadıköy, Üsküdar and the Bosphorus, the departure point of the Bosphorus tour boats, and one of the city's main bus terminals.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
