Maiden's Tower

About Maiden's Tower

The Maiden's Tower, also known as Leander's Tower since the Byzantine period, is a tower on a small islet at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus strait, 200 m (220 yd) from the coast of Üsküdar in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Maiden's Tower (Kiz Kulesi), also known since Byzantine times as Leander's Tower, is a small tower on a rocky islet at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus, about 200 metres off the Uskudar shore on the Asian side of Istanbul. It is one of the icons of the city and appeared on the back of the Turkish 10-lira note from 1966 to 1981. Local legend tells of a sultan who dreamed that his daughter would die of a snakebite on her eighteenth birthday and built her a tower in the water to keep snakes away, only for a snake to slip in with a basket of fruit sent as a birthday gift. Historically the tower was a defensive post from the Byzantine era, when a chain was stretched from it to the European shore to close the Bosphorus in wartime; under the Ottomans it served as a customs and quarantine station, a lighthouse and a warehouse, and in recent decades as an upmarket restaurant, until the latest restoration, completed in 2023, turned it into a museum. Visitors reach it by small boats from the Salacak pier in Uskudar or from Kabatas, and from its terrace there are views over the Bosphorus, the historical peninsula and the Bosphorus Bridge. Every evening at 21:00 a light show on the tower can be watched free from the shore.

Where:

Istanbul, Türkiye