Çatalca and Its Surroundings #culture Trip (26 April 2022)
We start our journey, which will take approximately 1.5 hours, departing from the Taksim stop at 07.30. After arriving in Mimarsinan, we arrived in Çatalca after meeting with the Great Exchange Association at the port where the refugees came to the Motherland.
Our first stop will be the #Exchange Museum, Turkey’s first immigration-themed museum, which will take us back to those years with its sleeping prayer rug, which was among the top 5 among 1000 projects in Istanbul, the 2010 European Capital of Culture. After completing our museum tour, we will take a short walk in an old Greek Quarter (now Kaleiçi). Here, we will find rare examples of wood and stonework used together. Next, we will see the Historical #Heeled Fountain, where the Christian Orthodox performed the ritual of removing the Cross from the water during the #Byzantine era.
During the panoramic tour, we will see the building, which used to be the first Greek Orthodox School of Istanbul and now serves as the Gendarmerie Building, Ferhat Pasha Mosque, a work of Mimar Sinan, and the primary school, respectively. After seeing the tribes belonging to the Crimean Khans in this building garden, we will go to the #İnceğiz village and visit the İnceğiz Caves, which remained from the Genoese and were dug for shelter.
After our cave tour, which was used as a church in the late periods, we will reach the village of Kabakça, where Arif Nihat Asya, one of the essential representatives of Turkish poetry in the Republican period and the author of the Flag Poetry, was born. In this village, Seyfullah Oktay will welcome us with the museum house he built with his means. After the museum tour, our return to Istanbul will begin with a visit to the #Alaiye 1st Balkan War Martyrdom.
During our trip, Çatalca Mayor Mesut Üner, Çatalca Culture and Tourism Association Chairman of the Board and IBB Council Member Ahmet Rasim Yücel, Chairman of the Board of the Great Exchange Association Sabit Temiz and Çatalca Travel Selim Aras will be with us.
