Moda Iskele, or Fashion Pier, has been restored and unveiled to service passenger ships and yachts stopping at Istanbul at the initiative and with fund provided by Istanbul City Hall. Piers are an indispensable part of the maritime traffic of the multimillion city and a particularly important point in a city like Istanbul, which has access to two seas – the Black and the Sea of Marmara and is crossed by a water channel – the Bosphorus Strait.
Istanbul has 42 piers on both shores, most of them of historical value. The oldest among them, on the Bosphorus, date even from the 1850s.
Moda Iskelesi, though, is the best known pier on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. It is a keynote site in Kadikoy (known in classical antiquity and during the Roman and Byzantine eras as Chalcedon) which is home to some 500,000 residents. It is also a key link between Istanbul’s European and Asian shores.
Moda Iskelesi was built in 1916, but the erosion of time and conflicts in governance left it closed for a long time.
The renovated pier was unveiled by Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
The beautiful two-storey building includes a library, a cafe and a cultural and information centre. Besides its purely pragmatic function, it offers an impressive view of the peninsula across and Istanbul landmarks like Topkapi Palace and St. Sophia.
