Maiden's Tower
lighthouse at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus in Turkey
The Maiden's Tower (Turkish: Kız Kulesi; Greek: Πύργος της Κόρης), also known as Leander's Tower (Greek: Πύργος του Λέανδρου, lit. 'Tower of Leandros') since the Byzantine period, is a tower on a small islet at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus strait, 200 m (220 yd) from the coast of Üsküdar in Istanbul, Turkey.
The tower appeared on the reverse of the Turkish 10 lira banknote from 1966 to 1981.
History
After the naval victory at Cyzicus, in 408 BC the Athenian general Alcibiades probably built a custom station for ships coming from the Black Sea on a small rock called Arcla (small castle) and Damialis (its calf) in front of Chrysopolis (today's Üsküdar).
In 1110 Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus built a wooden tower protected by a stone wall. From the tower an iron chain stretched across to another tower erected on the European shore in the Mangana quarter of Constantinople. The islet was then connected to the Asiatic shore through a defence wall whose underwater remains are still visible. During the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the tower held a Byzantine garrison commanded by the Venetian Gabriele Trevisano. Subsequently, the structure was used as a watchtower by the Ottomans during the reign of sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.
The tower was destroyed during the earthquake of 1509, rebuilt, and then burned down in 1721. Reconstruction was ordered by the grand vizier Damad Ibrahim Pasha and the new building was used as a lighthouse; the surrounding walls were repaired in 1731 and 1734.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q848397. VIAF identifies the subject as 241204359. The Library of Congress control number is sh2006008572. Authority coordinates are 41.021, 29.004. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1981, 1110 and 1453.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maiden's Tower” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.