Guide
The Beyazıt Tower was first built of wood in the Beyazıt quarter of İstanbul in 1749 to watch for fires and give warning of them. It stood 85 metres high, and later additions brought it to 118. It has three parts — the watch floor, the signal floor and the flag floor — and the stairs up to the lookout run to 180 steps. Today it stands within the central campus of İstanbul University, and as a monument museum it is attached to the university's corporate communications office, with oversight by the directorate of the İstanbul Archaeological Museums.
Like most medieval cities, İstanbul had towers used for keeping watch and for guiding ships. The first organised measure against the fires that struck the city so often was the fire brigade corps set up within the Janissary organisation in 1720 on the initiative of Damat İbrahim Pasha. The first tower at Beyazıt was put up in the garden of the Ağakapısı palace, which had been damaged in the Küçükpazar fire, to keep watch for fires; by the middle of the eighteenth century there were such towers at Beyazıt, Galata and İcadiye.
The tower burnt down in the Cibali fire of 1756 and was rebuilt in wood. Rebuilt again in 1826, it burnt once more in the Janissary revolt. It was built a third time in 1828, in the reign of Mahmud II, to the design of Senekerim Balyan. Fires were reported from the tower by baskets lowered from it by day and by lanterns lit at night. On the side facing Beyazıt Square there is an inscription bearing the monogram of Mahmud II, composed in verse and written out by Yesarizade Mustafa İzzet Efendi.
For a long time the tower was lit at night in different colours to tell the people of İstanbul the next day's weather: blue for a clear day, green for rain, yellow for fog and red for snow. The practice was stopped in 1995 and taken up again in 2010 on the initiative of the İstanbul metropolitan municipality.
By the time restoration began in 1997 the tower was in no state to be used. After two years of work it serves once more as it did before, for fire watch, for meteorology and for reporting the state of the roads.
