Lonely Planet İstanbul Guide

whimsical marble bathing pavilions on the shore; one was for men, the other for the women of the harem. Further along on the Asian side, past the small village of Çengelköy, is the imposing Kuleli Military School ( MAP ; Çengelköy; g 15, 15E, 15H, 15KÇ, 15M, 15N, 15P, 15ŞN, 15T, 15U from Üsküdar, 15F from Kadıköy) , built in 1860 and immortalised in İrfan Orga’s wonderful memoir Portrait of a Turkish Family . Look out for its two ‘witch hat’ towers. Almost opposite Kuleli on the European shore is Arnavutköy (Albanian Village), which boasts a number of gabled Ottoman-era wooden houses and Greek Orthodox churches. On the hill above it are buildings formerly occupied by the American College for Girls. Its most famous alumni was Halide Edib Adıvar, who wrote about the years she spent here in her 1926 work The Memoir of Halide Edib . The building is now part of the prestigious Robert College. Arnavutköy runs straight into the glamorous suburb of Bebek , known for its shopping and chic cafe-bars such as Lucca. It also has the most glamorous Starbucks in the city, right on the water, with a lovely terrace. Bebek’s shops surround a small park and the Ottoman Revivalist–style Bebek Mosque ( MAP ; g 22, 22B & 25E from Kabataş, 22RE & 40 from Beşiktaş, 40, 40T & 42T from Taksim) . To the east of these is the ferry dock; to the south is the Egyptian consulate building ( MAP ; Bebek; g 22 & 25E from Kabataş, 22RE & 40 from Beşiktaş, 40, 40T & 42T from Taksim) , thought by some to be the work of Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco. This gorgeous art-nouveau mini-palace was built for Emine Hanım, mother of the last khedive (viceroy) of Egypt, Abbas Hilmi II. It’s the white building with two mansard towers and a wrought-iron fence. Opposite Bebek on the Asian shore is Kandilli , the Place of Lamps, named after the lamps that were lit here to warn ships of the particularly treacherous currents at the headland. Among the many yalıs here is the huge red Kont Ostrorog Yalı ( MAP ; Kandilli; g 15, 15F & 15T from Üsküdar) , built in the 19th century by Count Leon Ostorog, a Polish adviser to the Ottoman court; Pierre Loti visited here when he was in İstanbul in the 1890s. A bit further on, past