Rumeli Fortress
Three-towered fortress raised in four months to blockade the Bosphorus at its narrowest point.
This guide to Rumeli Fortress in Istanbul opens in the spring of 1452, when a twenty-year-old Mehmed the Second, planning to take Constantinople by cutting off its supply lines through the Bosphorus, brought three thousand workers to raise this fortress in four months, its towers divided among his ministers racing to finish first. It pairs the new fortress with an older one on the Asian shore, built by Mehmed's great-grandfather Bayezid the First, and follows what happened when a Venetian vessel tried to run the narrow gap between them. Stand at the water and look across at the half-mile stretch the two fortresses were built to guard.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.