İstanbul's fire brigade museum was first opened in 1931 by firefighters of the day, in an annexe built beside the historic building in Fatih that still houses the fire department. It has closed and reopened repeatedly -- for conservation of the collection, for building work. It opened again in 1989, closed in 1997 for repairs, and reopened on 23 September 1998, during Fire Brigade Week, renamed after Count Szechenyi, who the museum says gave 48 years of his life to the İstanbul fire service.
In 2008 the Fatih building went into a general restoration and the museum had to leave. The collection spent about two years stored with the Başakşehir fire group before moving to its present home in Beşiktaş, the building known as the Kılıç Ali Pasha cistern, where it was catalogued and laid out to a new plan. Since 1996 the museum has been run by the municipality's libraries and museums directorate rather than by the fire department.
The collection spans three hundred years, and it is the equipment that makes it: the earliest hand pumps -- the canopied type -- neighbourhood pumps, pressurised pumps, the first motorised pump, a horse-drawn pump cart, a canvas cistern, ladders including a fire ladder, gloves, fire lanterns, rescue ropes, masks and their filters, a telephone exchange, distribution taps, the dress of both the old pump crews and modern firefighters, fire helmets, officers' fire axes and assorted headgear.
The history is told in four stages, of which the museum's page sets out the first. Pumps in the 17th century were used only to empty water out of ships; the version developed for firefighting dates to 1714. A French engineer who converted to Islam and took the name Davud -- known as Davud-u Hakiki, the true Davud -- built a modified pump of this kind, and after it was used successfully against fires in the Tufekhane and then the Tophane quarters, the grand vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha put him at the head of the imperial pump corps.
Because this is the museum of a living profession, it also works as a teaching centre: groups from pre-school to university age are given the history of the fire service and of the museum.
The second stage of the story is the one that explains the costumes in the cases. Fire fighting in the city belonged to the neighbourhood pump crews, the tulumbacı, and they were a world of their own. They took gifts for the fires they put out — if the gift was a sheep it was called a share, and the chief divided it. Beyond their own dress they had a coffeehouse and entertainment culture, a habit of giving each other nicknames, communication systems of their own, the election of a chief for each group and a bath culture, and the museum's account treats all of this as a single social harmony, a school in the cultural sense.
The third stage begins with a fire and a foreigner. The great Beyoğlu fire of 1870, between Kurtuluş and Fındıklı, exposed how little the pump crews could do, and Abdülaziz ordered that experts on pumping and fire suppression be brought to İstanbul from the European countries. The search produced Count Ödön Szechenyi, a Hungarian who had founded the fire brigades of Vienna and Pest. He came in 1871, gave the firefighters theoretical instruction, reported that the city needed a fire service trained on military lines, and after a year went home. In 1874 Abdülaziz invited him again and made him chief instructor of the fire service, with his friend Baroni as his deputy, and from that point, the account says, he laid the foundations of the first genuinely modern fire organisation in the Ottoman capital. Wanting fire fighting run by military discipline, he began with three battalions: the first in September 1874, the second in December 1876, the third in July 1877, the first two inside the walls and the third in Beyoğlu. He also aimed at a marine battalion, so that a fire on the Bosphorus should not destroy the wooden architecture on either shore, and in 1884 the first Turkish marine fire brigade was founded, with Abdülhamid's full support.
What was decided in those years shaped the equipment on show. A fire regiment had been formed on 2 September 1874, a month before Szechenyi's arrival, with a commission alongside it; the commission met with him and his colleagues Çeraki and Vulmann, went through the systems in use in Europe and considered which of them would serve İstanbul. The decisions taken were to absorb the irregular pump crews into the new regiments and train them on military lines, to buy several modern steam pumps, and to set up a training centre at Taksim. Water pools were to be built at points across the city and the carrying of pumps on men's shoulders brought to an end. The uniforms were to be renewed in material that resisted high heat, like felt, with a metal helmet, a long-sleeved tunic and trousers held by a strong sash, and long leather boots in place of shoes. Abdülhamid II gave Szechenyi the rank of colonel in 1877 and of lieutenant-general in 1883, and with it the title of Commander of the General Fire Regiments, which he held for forty years.
Even so, fire did not stop being the first danger in the capital, and the reason turned out not to be technical. Abdülhamid II had the matter investigated, and the investigation concluded that most fires were being started by property owners who wanted money from the insurance companies. He discussed measures with Szechenyi Paşa and the battalion major Refet Bey, and the orders that followed produced a fire-prevention regulation of eight articles that set out protective measures and a series of penalties alongside them, meant to stop people setting light to their own property. This forty-eight-year phase of the İstanbul fire service ended with the founding of the Republic, after which the organisation was rebuilt to the requirements of the modern world and has gone on working wholly within local government.
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 09:00–17:30, closed Monday
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).
