Engaging with Istanbul's Water Heritage

Results

Workshops

• Engaging with Istanbul’s Water Heritage: Exploring Sustainable Ways to Create Public Awareness (22 September 2022 - Dutch Consulate General  – Istanbul – Turkey).

This workshop started from the assumption that the 'biography' of Istanbul's 1,500 year old water supply system can raise public awareness of current and future challenges related to water supply and use and can be an engine for sustainable development. The participants,  NGOs, and representatives from the heritage sector and creative industry from both Turkey and the Netherlands, came up with recommendations for workable and sustainable initiatives to increase public awareness of water supply and use through knowledge of and interaction with Istanbul’s water heritage. Organised together with the Netherlands Institute in Turkey.

Video impression of the workshop: Engaging with Istanbul’s Water Heritage Workshop in Istanbul 22.9.2022 (youtube.com)

• Water Heritage Istanbul (6-7 June 2024, Dutch Consulate-General  – Istanbul – Turkey). With participants from ISKI (Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration) and Waternet Amsterdam. Organised together with the Netherlands Institute in Turkey.

Presentations

• ‘The multi-layered history of the Valens Aqueduct in Constantinople / Istanbul’ (23 June 2022, Workshop Aqueducts, canals, qanats - construction and management of water conduits in the late antique and medieval periods, Source of Life Project, Radboud University Nijmegen)

• ‘Revitalizing Istanbul’s Water Heritage. Sustainable solutions for increasing knowledge and public engagement’ (20 March 2023, UN Conference official side event Water and Heritage: Connecting Past, Present and Future, organized by ICOMOS (ISC Water and Heritage, NL and US), the UNESCO Chair on Water, Ports and Historic Cities, the engineering firm Witteveen+Bos and the Water Authority Amstel, Gooi en Vecht (AGV), and supported by the Union of Water Boards, The Netherlands, the Icomos International Scientific Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH), the Icomos Sustainable Development Goals Working Group (SDGWG), Harlem Stage, New York)
• ‘Water Heritage in Istanbul. Voorstellen voor het duurzaam revitaliseren van het Valens aquaduct’ (14 April 2023, bijeenkomst Netwerk WaterHeritage, Waternet Amsterdam 14-4-2023)
• ‘Istanbul’s Water Supply: History and Heritage’ (8 January 2024, The Archaeology of Irrigation Technology and Water Management in the Islamic World conference, 7-10 January 2024, Bahrain National Museum, Kingdom of Bahrain)
• 'Proposals for Public Engagement with Istanbul's Water Heritage' (6 June 2024, workshop Water Heritage Istanbul, Dutch Consulate General  – Istanbul – Turkey) 
• ‘Water Memories – a collaborative public outreach project in Istanbul’  and the web application ‘Istanbul-SU’ (Netherlands Institute in Turkey Day at Radboud University – 6 December 2024)
• 'Water Memories of Istanbul’ (Annual Meeting Byzantine Studies Netherlands, UvA, 13 December 2024)
• ‘The importance of water in Istanbul. From ancient times until today’ (public lecture for the occasion of the launch of the Walking App Istanbul’s Water Heritage, Hrant Dink Foundation, Istanbul, 19 February 2025)
•  ‘Constantinopel en (het gebrek aan) water’/ Constantinople and (the lack of) water’ (public lecture, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, 16 April 2026)
• ‘Engaging with Constantinople’s water supply system in the past and present’ (workshop Anchoring Urban Lived Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, University of Groningen, 16 June 2026)

Education

• NIT URBAN HERITAGE LAB - Water Heritage for Sustainable Cities - Online Lectures & Classes | Istanbul 3-days Field Trip  (September-December 2022)

A course organized by the Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT), in collaboration with LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development, Radboud University, Middle East Technical University (METU) and the Netherlands Consulate-General in Istanbul.

The course addressed past experiences and current and future challenges of urban water supply. Scholars and experts from the Netherlands and Turkey (both countries with a rich past in terms of water-related developments) discussed historical and contemporary topics, and the participants investigated the material and immaterial history and aspects of the ancient Valens Aqueduct in today's Istanbul. Originally built in the fourth century as part of "the longest Roman waterway", it underwent many transformations over the centuries and lost its original function. In a group assignment, the participants developed  proposals for action for the re-valorization of this multi-layered water heritage object, focusing on sustainable development and/or increasing public awareness of contemporary and future water issues.

Publications

• (2023) Mariëtte Verhoeven, Fokke Gerritsen, Aysel Arslan, Alvise Cechetti, Özgün Özçakır (Eds.), Water Heritage for Sustainable Cities. Proposals for the Revalorization of the Valens Aqueduct in Istanbul. Istanbul: Netherlands Institute in Turkey. https://www.nit-istanbul.org/publication/water-heritage-for-sustainable-cities

• (2023) Mariëtte Verhoeven, Fokke Gerritsen, Özgün Özçakır, ‘Revitalizing Istanbul’s Water Heritage: The Valens Aqueduct’, Blue Papers 2 (1), 154-163. https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2023.1.15

• (2025) ‘The Potential of Istanbul’s Water Heritage for Current and Future Water-related Challenges’. In Timothy Insoll, Rachel MacLean, and Salman Almahari (Eds.) The Archaeology of Irrigation Technology and Water Management in the Islamic World Proceedings of the Bahrain Conference, January 2024: Archaeopress Archaeology, 180-194.

Outreach

• Webapplication and Database Istanbul-SU

Istanbul-SU (Su means water in Turkish) aims to map Istanbul’s historical water-related installations in order to make the complex networks of water supply systems visible and increase knowledge about them.

• KarDes Istanbul’s Water Heritage Walking Tour (App) 

The Istanbul Water Heritage Tour invites you to witness the city’s historic water structures and stories, from Zeyrek Cistern to Çinili Hammam, from Valens Aqueduct to Ayşe Sultan Fountain, and from Istanbul’s traditional fire brigades to water carriers.

The tour stops include structures such as cisterns, aqueducts, hammams, fountains, sebils, mosques, and churches, as well as the stories of Istanbul’s traditional fire brigades, water carriers, bath attendants, and fishermen. İlksen Mavituna’s and Jennifer Hattam’s voices will accompany you on the tour of historical water installations and water-related stories that remain everywhere in the modern city.

The tour was prepared by the Hrant Dink Foundation in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute in Turkey and Radboud University, with the support of Vrije University.

What is KarDes?

KarDes collects unknown multicultural stories from the past and creates walking routes with Turkish and English voiceovers. Users can embark on "memory tours," which typically last two hours and consist of 9 to 15 stops, exploring the layered histories of neighborhoods through oral history videos and photographs.

With the Explore feature of the app, users can also discover cultural heritage sites in their surroundings.

You can download the KarDes: Multicultural Memory Tours Guide for free from the App Store and Play Store on your phones and tablets.