Legend says an emperor was told a snake would kill his daughter on her 18th birthday. So he shut her in a tower in the sea.
The real tower stands about 200 metres off Üsküdar, at the Bosphorus's southern mouth.
The story goes: she lived there until a basket of fruit was sent out. Inside, the snake. She died.
Ask three tellers and the basket changes: fruit for the municipality, grapes for the İBB, flowers for others. In the İBB version the king then set an iron casket above a gate of Hagia Sophia.
A second legend is a geography error. Since Byzantine times the tower has also been Leander's Tower, after the Greek myth of Hero and Leander. That story belongs to the Dardanelles, a different strait.
So what did it actually do? Who built it first is disputed: Alcibiades around 408 BC, 410 or 411 BC, or Emperor Alexios I in 1110, depending on the source. The Byzantines ran it as a customs and toll post, chained to a tower on the European shore. The Ottomans rebuilt it in stone in 1763, after a fire, as a lighthouse.
Fast-forward. A 49-year restaurant lease after the 1998–2000 restoration. Then the Ministry's 2021–23 restoration took it back to its early-19th-century form, hidden stainless-steel braces included. It reopened on 11 May 2023 with a laser show; the museum-opening notice is dated 1 March 2024. Two dates, two steps.
See it from the Üsküdar shore first. To go out, boats were announced from Karaköy as of 1 March 2024; later guides disagree on where boats leave from today, so check the Ministry site and the operator the day before. Weekday, off-season.
