Heybeliada
Car-free island with pine forests and a Greek Orthodox seminary closed since 1971.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Heybeliada in Istanbul follows the car-free island's pine-covered hills up to the Halki Seminary, opened in 1844 as the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate's school of theology and graduate of Patriarch Bartholomew the First. You'll hear why Turkey forced the school to close in 1971, and how three American presidents - Clinton, Obama, and Trump - each raised its locked gate with Turkish leaders in the decades since. Listen for the chapel that survived the 1894 earthquake, the one structure still standing below the seminary's iron gates.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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