The Street of the Cold Fountain (Terry)

The Street behind the Hagia Sophia takes you back to the old days of the city. Soğukçeşme Sokağı (literally: Street of the Cold Fountain) is a small street with historic wooden houses in the Sultanahmet neighborhood, sandwiched in-between the Hagia Sophia and Topkapı Palace. The car-free zone street is named after the fountain situated at its end towards Gülhane Park.

Wikipedia has a reference

We were walking along the street looking for a Geocache placed by a friend from Istanbul.  Tricky little cache, as it's placed in an alcove right outside a unit occupied by the street’s guards.  The street is iconic – there are 10 old Ottoman style houses in it, 9 of which are owned by the Turkish version of the RAC.  The 10^th is a library owned by a Foundation set up by an Istanbul lawyer, who also donated the other 9 houses to the Touring and Automobile Club of Turkey.  (he was President, board member etc for years.)

Each house is named after a flower and has that flower planted outside it.

 

Wikipedia again

We couldn’t find the cache and gave up, walking down the street towards the bottom of the hill.  We stopped outside the library and I was reading out loud to Carol from the cache notes about the library.  Out of my view, but in Carol’s view, was a man in a window of the library.  He heard me reading and motioned to Carol to come to the door, which we did.  He invited us in to the library and gave us a private impromptu tour.  What a wonderful place to live! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were two floors that we were taken to and they are packed with reading desks and superb built-in bookcases, photos of old Istanbul and of a Greek church a little ways out of town.  He gave us old books to browse, showed us the charts and generally made us welcome in this very private environment.  His name was Zia and I can’t place the relationship to the library’s founder, Celik Gulersoy, as Mr Gulersoy never married and lived alone. 

 

Zia and Terry

I purchased a book from him on a famous Greek church in Istanbul (called, of course “Chora”) that was written by Celik Gulersoy in 1986.  He wrote many before his death in 2003. 

 

It was a wonderful experience to be able to see the library and the building’s artworks, a chance opportunity not given to many people.

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