Kavafyan Mansion, the oldest traditional house in Istanbul

Kavafyan Mansion, 18. It is the oldest traditional house in Istanbul, which has survived since the 19th century. It was built twenty years after the Tulip Era, when the Bebek district was first settled, and pioneered the inner-village architectural culture of the Bosphorus. In 1980, it became the property of the General Directorate of Foundations.

Since the house was built in 1751, it is the oldest surviving house in Istanbul. The most important interior architectural feature of Kavafyan Mansion is the mural paintings with landscape depictions, which are the earliest examples of its period.

The mansion, which was built in the years coinciding with the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, was a Greek house. However, later on, it passed to an Armenian family and was called Kavafyan Mansion. According to some historians, it was built by an Armenian from Eğin.

Until 1998, the fifth-generation grandchildren of the Kavafyan family, Samuel and his wife Beatris Kavafyan lived in it. The mansion is currently empty. It is abandoned to its fate. A stroke of a spark can burn this oldest example of traditional Turkish architecture in Istanbul in a few minutes.

Seda Akcer Öztek

Taken from Mano Chil