Anadoluhisarı

Overview

On the Asian shore, where the Bosphorus is at its narrowest, a little stream called the Göksu flows into the strait. Fishing boats crowd its mouth, while wooden mansions lean over the water, and above them all stands an old square stone keep. Across the strait, the great towers of Rumelihisarı face it. This is Anadoluhisarı, the Anatolian Fortress, built in the 1390s. To fish these waters with a local captain, see our fishing trips.

So look for it from your boat, on the right as you sail north.

Anadoluhisarı at the Narrowest Point

To begin with, the fortress stands in the Beykoz district, on the Asian side, at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus. The Göksu stream marks its southern edge. Today, in turn, a small neighborhood of wooden yalıs and narrow lanes surrounds the walls, and it shares the fortress’s name.

History of Anadoluhisarı

Bayezid’s watch fort

Sultan Bayezid I built the fortress in the 1390s, as he prepared to besiege Byzantine Constantinople. At the time, its name was Güzelce Hisar, the Beauteous Fortress. Inside the five-sided walls, at the same time, a tall square keep watched over the strait. However, his siege failed. First a crusade at Nicopolis interrupted it, and then his defeat at the Battle of Ankara ended it.

Two fortresses, one strait

Half a century later, his great-grandson Mehmed II strengthened the fortress with a thick new wall and more towers. Then, in 1452, Mehmed II built Rumelihisarı right across the water. Together, the two fortresses closed the Bosphorus to ships in 1453, and so they helped the Ottomans take the city. Afterward, Anadoluhisarı became a customs house and a military prison and slowly fell into ruin, until a restoration in 1991 to 1993 and new work from 2021.

What to See at Anadoluhisarı

The keep and the walls

Although you cannot go inside, the fortress is easy to see. From the shore road, you walk right past its walls and towers. Even better, from a boat you see the keep rise over the water, exactly as sailors did six centuries ago.

The Göksu stream

Just south of the walls, the Göksu stream winds inland under the trees. In Ottoman times, it was a favorite place for outings by boat, and painters loved it too. For example, the Italian court painter Fausto Zonaro painted a young woman in a light veil beside the boats here.

The Many Names of Anadoluhisarı

Early Ottoman writers called the fortress Güzelcehisar, though one copy of a chronicle gives Gözlücehisar, the watch fortress, a name that fits its task. Others knew it as Yenicehisar, the New Fortress, or Akçehisar, and Western travelers translated the first of these as Neo-Castrum. In the 17th century, a warden and 200 soldiers from Kocaeli manned it, with guns aimed across at Rumelihisarı and toward Akıntıburnu, and a small mosque stood outside the walls. Later, it served as a prison. From the 1830s it was left empty, wooden houses filled the shore between the walls, the Göksu and the sea, and the gates of the outer wall were widened to let the shore road through.

How to Visit Anadoluhisarı

Getting there

In general, the first view is from a Bosphorus boat. By land, buses run north along the Asian shore road from Üsküdar.

Seeing it with us

You pass it on our Bosphorus tour and on a Bosphorus cruise, and we can stop here on our Bosphorus villages tour. Afterward, cross over to Rumelihisarı, its younger sister, and read about the man who joined them, Mehmed the Conqueror. Just south, the little Küçüksu Pavilion makes a lovely second stop.