ESCAPE ROUTES AND OTHER RENOVATION SURPRISES
Kathy Hamilton Ýstanbul
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 17 2007
Friends who have bought houses or apartments in Turkey are all too
often caught unawares by unpleasant surprises during renovation work.
It’s those sudden snags that fray tempers and make them rethink the
wisdom of deciding to buy property here. But some friends have actually
come upon interesting and welcome surprises. You expect to pay higher
prices if you know the property comes with Roman walls in the garden,
or a cistern converted into a recreation room. But it’s a real coup
to purchase a house and come across unexpected finds behind the walls
or tucked away in the basement.
A writer friend bought a rather run down house in Kumkapý, thinking
it was just another "fixer-upper" that would yield the usual leaky
pipes to baffle plumbers along with the occasional creaky floor that no
one could mend. But, after starting to haul load after load of debris
and years of accumulated junk out of the basement he came across an
unusual find. What he at first thought was a half-hearted attempt to
fix a part of the wall turned out to be, in fact, a tunnel running
from his house towards a local Armenian church.
"It wasn’t until the workmen and I started removing all the rubbish
lying down there that we found it," he explained. "It took us weeks
to remove enough of the junk in the basement before we found out what
it really was. Apparently it had caved in many years ago, or possibly
been filled in after it was no longer in use. It’s so small that you
have to crawl to get into it." After clearing more of the trash away,
they found another tunnel on the other side of the basement. It too
was filled in and was in an advanced state of disrepair. It seemed
to run under the street, but where it might lead to he couldn’t tell.
He asked around the neighborhood, but no one knew about the tunnels,
and no one even seemed too surprised. Maybe it was an old escape route
from the church. While he was surprised by the find, the neighbors
just shrugged it off as another part of the history of the city that
didn’t concern them. For security reasons he closed up the tunnels,
since he would rather visitors come in through the more conventional
front door rather than the basement.
In Beyazit a different surprise was lurking in the basement of a
carpet dealer. He knew when he bought the property that there was a
Roman wall as part of the foundation. But what he didn’t know was that
hiding behind the wall was another hidden room no one had known about.
While giving me a tour of the room, he explained, "We wanted to expand
the basement for a showroom, and when we were doing the renovations
we found that the wall was, in fact, the side of a small room. It’s
made with ancient bricks and stones. The workmanship was really
good. The walls were in good shape, so after cleaning it out we’ve
left it basically as we found it. The roof is beautifully arched and
there are some niches built into the walls. I have not been able to
find out what was here originally, unfortunately."
Another friend bought an apartment in Galata to use as a rental
property. Years of paint had to be scraped off the walls before they
could start renovating the flat. As layer after layer of paint fell
away, she found herself face to face with an eye peering out from the
original wall. Not knowing what she was going to find, she slowly and
carefully peeled away paint and found a Florentine-style mural on the
wall. Only bits and pieces remained, but there was enough to see that
at one time there had been a pastoral scene covering the entire wall.
Pointing to the now cleaned wall, she said "We’ve asked around, but no
one seems to know just how old our building is. We know it is at least
a hundred years old, but maybe it’s older than that. It was just too
time-consuming to try and trace it back any further. From what we can
tell, this mural was probably painted as part of the original decor
of the building. It would be nice to know who had lived here, and what
kind of house this had been, but no one seems to know much about it."
Sometimes in Turkey you will find pleasant surprises when buying
property. Emergency escape routes, murals and hidden rooms are just a
few examples of what might await you. While these surprises may not
affect the property value, it’s nice to have a piece of history all
your own. Of course, tunnels may not be the best surprise if burglars
find them before you do.
–Boundary_(ID_CAcCG12qNRb3ZGVqQTlJ8w)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
