The ancient Aydos Castle in Sultanbeyli, a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey, will be reopened for tourists this year, after completion of the castle’s four-year restoration funded by the municipality of Sultanbeyli.
The castle is best known as the place where the conquest of Istanbul started almost 700 years ago. As with so many other places that enjoy a wealth of heritage assets, the community’s motivation for investing in this restoration was partly economic.
History professor Halil İnalcık expects that the restoration of the castle, and its subsequent reopening to tourism, will likely revitalize Sultanbeyli. “We will become a center for international culture tourism. Now, environmental works are being carried out around the castle. The artifacts unearthed from the castle have been registered and are being kept at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. We also plan to open a small museum to display them,” he explains.
The construction date of Byzantine castle—which is located in Pendik at a height of 531 meters above sea level—is unknown. It was annexed into the Ottoman territory between 1327 and 1328 by Sultan Orhan I.
The castle is named after the hill called Mount Aydos, on which it is located. The ellipse-shaped structure—locals as Keçikale—is 120 meters wide and 50 meters long, and completely encompasses the summit of the hill. The Castle dating from the Byzantine period is called by . It was conquered by Kara Abdurrahman Gazi in 1328.