The Yedikule Fortress

According to Pierre Nora's "Lieux de Memoire," “A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community." The Yedikule Fortress, or "Fortress of Seven Towers," a walled in fort located in Faith, Istanbu, is a Lieux de memoire. Its thick, stone, medieval walls stand today, partially preserved, partially ruins, with visible reminders of the fort's mutli-faceted past. The fort's tenure as a state treasury and subsequent turn use as a prison conjure questions about the relationship of power to protection and fear to political success, while its evolution into school and museum reflect a modernity and a post modernity that date its prior uses, and invite us to investigate its past more closely. Remnants of the many iterations of the Yedikule fortress can be viewed today, and a time capsule that can help us understand the various ways in which Istanbul changed the meaning of the fortress over time. Its many iterations tell a history of the monument and its complex, if paradoxical, significance throughout Istanbul's history; the collective memory of its many iterations and the way its remains tell a particular narrative of Istanbul history, make it a lieux de memoire. Now for the palimpsest of history you will find inside...