I would witness a hill overlooking the Golden Horn while Istanbul silhouettes were being projected on television screens.. This hill, called Pierre Loti Hill, really did have a beauty that dominates Istanbul from a different angle and impresses with its view. Since I promised myself to visit the place, I asked my friend to turn my eyes to Pierre Loti Hill.
After meeting in Taksim Square, I did not know how to reach our destination so I handed over all the ropes to my friend.. The way he learned by hearsay seemed to turn into a torment for us.
After arriving at Eminönü Square from Taksim, we started looking for the municipal buses going in the direction of Gaziosmanpaşa.. We were tired of the weather, in which the heat was intensely felt.
We embarked on a packed journey with the city bus that finally arrived.. Since we are going to Eyüp and Gaziosmanpaşa districts, the general clothing habits of the residents of the district were not suitable for hot weather.. When the air conditioner of the bus was not turned on, I was trying to get my head out of the air gap I could find.
Our suffocation was prevented by the occasional bus stopping and opening its doors at the stops.
After passing Eyüp Sultan, the bus continued on its way with winding slopes.. I, on the other hand, was watching the surroundings in a state of unconsciousness due to the heat.
With the bus driver saying the last stop, we perceived that we had arrived in Gaziosmanpaşa.
After getting our water from the nearest place, let’s get some water. We cooled off.
After asking a person the way, we started walking.. According to our estimations, we would reach Pierre Loti Hill in 20 minutes.
At the end of our walk, where sweat continued to flow from our foreheads, we found it on a dirt road with shopkeepers trying to attract tourists. At the end of the dusty road where they shouted disrespectfully at each other and the heat became intolerable, there was a cemetery on one side and a beautiful wooded coffee house on the other side.
We wanted to sit in the coffee house and enjoy this beautiful view before relaxing.. We took our cameras and pressed the shutter button many times with the pride of looking at Istanbul from a different perspective.
After discussing the luck of those lying in the cemetery, we tried to see the Galata Tower and the Historic Peninsula.. We watched the waters of the Golden Horn, which once used to scatter alarm bells in the filth, with its slightly bluer color and which houses several islands.. The sea bikes floating on the water were showing an interesting image.
I said no to my friend’s pedal boat offer without thinking.. It could have been a really terrible experience for me.
After we went to the coffee shop, we sipped our sodas and got used to the effect of the environment.
The proposal to change the hill to Eyüp Sultan Hill, which was once presented to the city council, received a lot of backlash.
Who was this Pierre Loti?
The person known as Pierre Loti was the French novelist and orientalist Julien Viaud, who came to Istanbul in 1876 and settled here, and is known for his frequent visits to a coffee house on this hill.
Pierre Loti, known as the Ottoman lover and given the honorary citizenship certificate of Istanbul, gave the hill its name because he often came here. He is famous for mixing the literary world as well.. While some intellectuals believed that he was really a Turkish friend, others argued that he actually loved the weak and backward state of the Ottoman Empire with pity.. In 1925, Nazım Hikmet mentioned himself in his poem The Charlatan Pier Loti:
Even you
you Pier Loti!
One of our yellow linoleum skins
passed by
the end of typhus
is closer to us than you
French officer!
Coffeehouse atmosphere and scenery After finishing our observation, we head towards the cable car that will carry us to the Golden Horn shore.. We descend to the shore of the Golden Horn with a soft descent over the cemetery with the cable car. Nazım Hikmet heavily criticizes Loti in his later lines, describing him as a bourgeois who “sells rotten French fabrics to the east with five hundred percent pride”.. On the other hand, writer Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar praised Loti in his book titled Istanbul and Pierre Loti and said that Loti’s writings have a more national feel and pleasure than some Turks’ writings, and wished that all his works about Turkey would be translated into Turkish. >
We set off on our way back, watching the Golden Horn, where everyone is sitting on the grass and watching the surroundings.
Every corner of Istanbul is a natural paradise, without these people…
