How To Make Friends and Not Fall Off A Wall: Exploring Yedikule Fortress

One of my biggest fears in a new place is loneliness. What if I don’t make any friends? What is I spend all my nights sitting alone in my apartment, skyping friends in America and eating Nutella and feeling isolated in a giant city?

Well, I have no intention of letting this happen.

And that’s why I found myself, days after arriving in Istanbul, walking to the train station to meet a group of photographers I’d never seen or spoken to.

This isn’t as sketchy as it sounds. I was going to a Couchsurfing meet-up—specifically, a Couchsurfing photo walk.

Couchsurfing is an online community that connects travelers looking for a couch to crash on with a host offering a couch, but it’s more than that: it’s a place to find an apartment, schedule a coffee date with a local, arrange get-togethers and activities, and ask for advice. It’s a great way to meet natives and foreigners who subscribe to the Couchsurfing philosophy.

Months before arriving in Istanbul, I signed up for a group on Couchsurfing called “Photography group of Istanbul,” which organizes a photowalk every other weekend. The first one I was able to attend was going to start at a place I’d never been to before: Yedikule Fortress.

Yedikule Fortress, or the Fortress of Seven Towers, actually began as a four-towered border wall in Byzantine times (when Istanbul was Constantinople). When Fatih Sultan Mehmet conquered Constantinople, he added three more towers to the wall and turned it into a fortress and a prison.

Which we lovingly reenacted.

We took a short train ride to the fortress, which is in the quiet neighborhood of Fatih. The fortress is grand, with a giant open area in the middle and lots of walls to climb on and towers to explore. However, the stairs are not in the best condition… and have no railings.

Gulp.

The walls are also railing-free, but wider than the stairs and therefore slightly less terrifying. It was fascinating—the fortress obviously gets tourists (there was an entrance fee), but it wasn’t particularly tourist-friendly. I can’t think of too many ruins I’ve visited that had no safeguard at all. Also, some of the towers don’t have any light inside—which actually ended up being a nice way to make friends, as we all clutched each other’s hands and slowly inched down the winding staircase in darkness.

The railing-free stairs and walls.

But all-in-all, the fortress was a lot of fun. We had lovely views of the water and the surrounding sections of the city from the walls. We explored all the different doors and separate towers, we snapped portraits of each other against the stone walls, we pretended we were Mehmet the Conqueror. And while I never felt comfortable enough to descend the stairs (I went down through the towers instead), there is some kind of thrill that comes from being unencumbered by the typical trappings of tourist-visited ruins. Plus, we had the place nearly to ourselves.

I was grateful that the photo walk took me to a piece of ancient Istanbul that I probably wouldn’t have discovered on my own. And while this might not be the sort of place I would take nervous parents, I have already been recommending it to intrepid travelers and adventurous students I’ve met around the city. After all, who doesn’t want to spend a sunny day playing in a FORTRESS?

And besides that, I made a slew of new friends to explore this crazy city with. Turns out that surviving treacherous ancient walls is a good bonding experience!

You can take a short suburban train to Yedikule from Sirkeci Train Station. Entrance is 5 TL—just be aware that there are no railings on the fortress, so it can be a little hazardous. Be safe!