"Sadullah Paşa Yalısı"

The mansions described with such admiration by French poet/author Lamartine in the 19th century are those that were built right by the sea (“yalı” in Turkish) and had boathouses below, and which have become world-famous as the "seaside mansions of the Bosphorus."

After the Ottomans captured Istanbul and made it their capital city, the Bosphorus was regarded as a summer resort and the traditional wooden architecture took hold there. It is unfortunate that only the chancellery of the Amucazade Hüseyin Paşa Yalısı has survived from that early period. During the Tulip Period starting in 1703, Ottoman statesmen and notables decked the shores of the Bosphorus with palaces and summer houses, a period that is best represented by the Sadullah Paşa Yalısı (1783). The wooden seaside mansions retained their basic architectural principles until the middle of the 19th century, when they were gradually replaced by less flammable brick houses especially during the first constitutional period (1839). Most of the surviving seaside mansions were built from then until WWI.

The seaside mansions of the Bosphorus point to a unique "culture of living." Once, the owners of these houses would leave their garden gates open when fish was aplenty, allowing public use of their docks; and they kept a large number of spare mattresses in their houses since the immigrants who arrived during the war years were first settled there. Furthermore, as people could go to any of these mansions without invitation during the month of Ramadan, they were always prepared to host guests.