Pierre Loti

Pierre Loti the best outdoor cafes and hangouts in Istanbul. After visiting the Eyup Sultan Mosque, many visitors head north up the hill to the Pierre Loti, where the famous French novelist is said to have come for inspiration. Pierre Loti loved İstanbul, its decadent grandeur and the late-medieval customs of a society in decline. When he sat in this cafe, under a shady grapevine sipping tea, he saw a Golden Horn busy with caïques (long, thin rowboats), schooners and a few steam vessels. The water in the Golden Horn was still clean enough to swim in and the vicinity of the cafe was given over to pasture.

The cafe that today bears his name offers views similar to the ones he must have enjoyed. It’s in a warren of streets on a promontory surrounded by the Cemetery of the Great Eyüp where many important Ottomans are buried. To find the cafe, walk out of the mosque’s main gate and turn right. Walk around the complex until you see a set of stairs and a steep cobbled path going uphill into the cemetery. Hike up the steep hill for 10 to 15 minutes to reach the cafe. Alternatively, a cable car joins the waterfront with the top of the hill. There’s also a souvenir store here that sells postcards featuring historical views of the city.

Pierre Loti, Istanbul

Pierre Loti is considered as one of the best viewpoints in the world, at different times of days and seasons, a completely different view, and each time magically

Pierre Loti

beautiful … At the end of the peak of the Golden Horn you enter to Eyup , follow the signs which will guide you through the steep streets you are coming to the place where the French writer and poet of the early twentieth century spent some time of his life, and in love with Istanbul sung its beauty.

People say that Loti was sitting in this bistro on Eyup for months and wrote “Azijada.”

Aziyadé is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of Loti’s illicit love affair with an 18 year old harem girl named Aziyadé. She was his greatest love, proof of that is the golden ring holding her name that he wore for the rest of his life.

In prose: “As for you, you Pierre Loti! The typhous louse that passes between us through our tarpaulin hides is closer to us than you are, French officer.” Nonetheless, the Turkish government named one of Istanbul’s famous hills “Pierre Loti Tepesi” or “Hill of Pierre Loti”. Also, there is a coffee shop located at the top of that hill which changed its name to “Piere Loti Coffee Shop”, which suggests that most Turkish people Have not yet forgetten Pierre Loti.