Rumeli Hisarı
— — the fortress that closed the strait.
Not only on a wall.
“The European fortress Mehmed II raised on the Bosphorus in the summer of 1452, across the narrowest point of the strait from the older Anadolu Hisarı. It was built in about four months, with three great towers and a curtain wall that runs down to the water. The sultan used it to cut Constantinople from the Black Sea grain trade. The city fell the following spring. From the studio, the place reads as stone holding its breath.
Rumeli Hisarı, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Rumeli Hisarı stands on the European bank of the Bosphorus in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul, at the strait's narrowest point — about 660 metres across to Anadolu Hisarı on the Asian shore. Sultan Mehmed II ordered the fortress built in the spring of 1452 and the work was complete by August of that year, in roughly four and a half months. Three great towers — named for the viziers Halil, Saruca, and Zağanos who oversaw their construction — anchor the curtain wall. The complex covers approximately 31,000 square metres on the hillside.
The masonry combines limestone, sandstone, and roughly cut field stone, banded in places with thin brick courses that absorb seismic movement — a Byzantine technique the Ottoman builders adapted. The three towers rise to between 22 and 28 metres and are roofed in lead. The curtain wall, about 250 metres along the slope, drops to a small water gate on the Bosphorus. Reused spolia from earlier Byzantine structures appear in the lower courses. The fortress was restored in the 1950s and again in the 2000s and now serves as an open-air museum.
The fortress was built in 1452 to choke the Bosphorus before the siege of Constantinople. Cannon mounted at the water gate stopped Black Sea shipping carrying grain to the city — a Venetian galley defying the blockade was sunk in November of that year. The siege began in April 1453 and ended on the 29th of May with the city's fall. Rumeli Hisarı held a garrison through Ottoman centuries, then served as a prison, then was opened as a museum in 1960. Concerts are now held inside in summer.