Haydarpaşa Terminal

Haydarpaşa station is the grandest building on the Asian shore of Istanbul — a massive German neo-Renaissance structure on a promontory at the southern entrance to the Bosphorus, its towers visible from the European side. Built in 1908 to serve as the Istanbul terminus of the Anatolian railway network, it carried millions of passengers across decades of Ottoman collapse, national founding, and republican modernisation.

The station has been closed since a fire in 2010 and its restoration has proceeded slowly. The exterior can be admired from the water — the ferry from Eminönü passes close enough for good photographs — and from the Kadıköy waterfront. Plans for conversion as a hotel and cultural space have been discussed for years. The building deserves better than the limbo it currently occupies.

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Haydarpaşa was built in 1908 as the European terminus of the Baghdad Railway — Germany's ambitious project to extend a railway from Istanbul to the Persian Gulf, which was one of the factors that drew Britain and Germany into the geopolitical rivalry that preceded World War I. The Kaiser personally approved the design, and the station was intended to announce Germany's presence in the Ottoman Empire. It was devastated by a fire in 2010 and has been closed to rail traffic since, its restoration and future use the subject of ongoing argument.