View across the Agora, looking up to the city's ancient citadel atop Panos Hill, now Kadifekale.
Gelibolu
Türkiye
September 29, 2023
Where Carla wanders around Gelibolu, a beautiful small town set on the shores of the Sea of Marmara.
I walked almost everywhere during my two days stay in Gelibolu, enough to get the feel for the place. This is a ‘right sized’ town – neither too large and anonymous, nor too small to run out of distinctive places and locales too quickly. The town proper sits on a shallow sloping hill that rises from the small bay in which its harbor has always sat. With the Gelibolu Strait widening into the Sea of Marmara here, Gelibolu feels distinctly Mediterranean, not so different from one of the shoreside towns that dot the great lakes in northern Italy, the far shore close enough to see some detail of houses and movement along the coast.
The activity feels much the same too: small fishing vessels crowded into the old port, their sailors fixing nets and tackle; ferries, cruise liners, large commercial ships and giant tankers steaming by in the wide channel beyond. All while the sun glitters sharply on deceptively calm waters. This is a place I would like to dawdle in for a week or so in late spring time. No wonder that in Greek times this was called ‘the beautiful town’ – Callipolis – now Gelibolu.
The harbor and Piri Reis Museum
If you look at old prints of Gelibolu you can quickly see that the port area (and so its heart) is still quite recognizable. There are two segments – outer and inner – to what is now the fishing harbor. The inner harbor holds the smaller boats, ones that can slip under the low arches of the coastal road above that divides the two. In one corner, set by the road at the edge of the inner harbor, sits the stump of a bulky, square tower. That’s the Piri Reis Museum (Google Maps hasn’t a clue). This tower was once much higher, a true watchtower to keep an eye on all incoming sea traffic well before entering the harbor.
If the name ‘Piri Reis’ sounds familiar, that’s because his name is connected to a 1513 CE map that replicates part of Christopher Columbus’ map, plus elements of Amerigo Vespucci’s, Pedro Cabral’s and other Portuguese navigators. Piri Reis lived in Gelibolu for a while; that famous map was made here.
The old houses
My destination being the Mevlevihane, the lodge of the dervish, I decided to walk from the port all the way there so that I could get a feel for the older parts of Gelibolu on the way up the hill. It’s a long walk, but worth it as you see much more than grabbing a taxi.
Two long promenades stretch from the seashore up to the first hill ridge, then one the rest of the way. Here you can see all the shops, markets, eateries, cafés and mosques (camii in Turkish) where the local people have lives and worked for centuries.
Further up you pass by what remains of the two floor wooden houses that characterize the homes of the Ottoman middle class a century and more ago. Most are shuttered and crumbling, waiting the hammer blow that will reduce them to a modern concrete apartment block. A very few, brightly painted, are still lived in. For how long?
The Mevlevihane
Think of Turkey and at some point you will remember the whirling dance of the dervish. These are followers of the mystic and ascetic Sufi branch of Islam. Their focus is on love and service; done at the expense of thinking of oneself and material things. The dance induces a trance state, bringing the dancer closer to God. In Turkey the community is known as Mevlevi; the celebration is the Sama.
The Mevlevihane is the community center where followers worship, celebrate – and dance. Sometimes these placesc are open to the public, sometimes not. Gelibolu’s Mevlevihane is, it is said, the largest of the fifteen lodges. It dates back to the early 1600s CE; the building we see today is a rebuild-and-restore from the 1890s. The place, abandoned for a long time, was recovered and reopened in 2005.
I was lucky – an event had just ended, the audience leaving the great hall on the ground floor. I took off my shoes and stepped inside. The whole building was empty of people. High vault, much wood framing, central section for the dancing, an adjacent one for the orchestra. Great open gallery above, for spectators to view the dancing from on high.
The Corniche
If you walk down a small alley just off the left hand side of the harbor when looking out to sea, you will find yourself at the beginning of a very long promenade set along the seashore. It is a fabulous walk, with some very beautiful apartments, mansions, restaurants, playing gardens – and a military post – on the land side, and the entire Sea of Marmara in front of you, stretching past the 1915 bridge and the Gelibolu Straits beyond.
Fishing boats bob in the calm bay that fronts Gelibolu, while gargantuan tankers slide past, some empty and some full depending on the cargo and direction. High walled floating resorts that pass as cruise ships glide on to their next port of call, to disgorge a few thousand people on a select destination for a few hours.
Dark storm clouds glower over mountains on the furthest shore of the sea, while the sun cracks through some lighter clouds with a cold, hard glare, freezing passing boats in silhouette.
One gentleman taking in the late afternoon sun as he sits on the sea breakers fronting Izmir's long promenade.