An interdisciplinary experiment for the urban morphology of Galata (Istanbul) and its surroundings during the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages

Özet

During its Byzantine times, Galata was the 13th region of Constantinople, oncethe illustrious imperial capital now called Istanbul. This part of modern Beyoğluespecially came to the forefront with its prosperous Genoese period, which lastedbetween 1267-1453. Although Galata had a significant urban and architecturaldevelopment during that period, there are solid evidence and recent discoveriesregarding the phenomenon of spatial continuity. In this regard, it was seen thatthe Genoese did not found Galata as a colonial settlement from scratch but infact possessed a well urbanized Byzantine district. In order to display the urbanlayout of its previous centuries, Galata was formerly subjected to some mappingattempts but few of them were able to accurately detect spatial continuities aswell as discontinuities between different historical periods of this neighborhood.Hence, those efforts remained rather inconclusive from an urban point of view.Main reasons behind this failure can be given as the lack of an interdisciplinaryapproach and proper knowledge of urban morphology. Therefore, this articleaims to improve the aforementioned research within the context of discoveringthe ancient road and water system; and to set a wider spatial connection betweenthe late antiquity and medieval periods of Galata in comparison with moderntimes. For this reason, primary sources and archaeological evidence were consideredfor exclusive urban objectives. In the end, related findings displayed that theurban layout of modern Galata and its surroundings not only have strong tracesremained from ancient times but also had significant transformations.