Haydarpaşa railway station

Haydarpaşa station stands at the water's edge on the Asian shore of Istanbul, a massive stone block in a German-inflected Neoclassical style that seems oddly northern on the Bosphorus. The impression is well founded. It was built for the German-backed Anatolian Railway, as the Istanbul terminus of the line that was meant to run on through Anatolia to Baghdad, and it was designed by the German architects Otto Ritter and Helmuth Cuno. The building was finished on 19 August 1909 and inaugurated that November.

The ground here was soft shoreline, and the station rests on 1,100 wooden piles, each 21 metres long, driven into the soft shore by a steam hammer. The façades are faced with Hereke–Lefke stone, and inside, the passenger halls were lit by stained glass. Seen from a ferry crossing from the European side, the station rises directly from the sea, with the great bulk of the terminal reflected in the water and the Haydarpaşa ferry pier at its feet; the pier building was added in 1917 to a design by the Turkish architect Vedat Tek and decorated with Kütahya tiles. For generations of travellers, this was the view that marked the passage from Europe into Asia, and the start of the long train journey into Anatolia.

The building has survived a remarkably violent history. On 6 September 1917, during the First World War, ammunition stored at the station and loaded on waiting trains exploded in an act of sabotage, gutting the terminal and damaging the towers. In 1979 the Romanian tanker Independența caught fire and exploded just offshore, shattering the stained glass windows; the building was repaired within months. In November 2010 a fire destroyed the roof and the top floor, and the timber roof trusses have since been rebuilt.

What makes Haydarpaşa memorable is its setting as much as its architecture: few railway stations anywhere meet the sea so directly. The best views are from the water or from the Kadıköy shore, especially towards evening, with the skyline of the old city lined up across the water.

Getting there

The station lies on the waterfront of the Kadıköy district, about 3 km from central Üsküdar. Ferries from Eminönü and Karaköy on the European side cross to Kadıköy, about a 10-minute walk away, and the Marmaray line under the Bosphorus stops at Ayrılık Çeşmesi, roughly 1.3 km from the building. The nearest airport is Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen (SAW), about 27 km away.