Istanbul's Feriköy Protestant Cemetery

What is it about?

Compared to the much larger, more evident burial grounds of Istanbul’s Muslim, Orthodox Christian, and Jewish communities, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery lies almost hidden in the heart of today’s modern city. But despite its modest size and presence, the cemetery offers untold evidence about Istanbul’s unique intercommunal past, especially its sizable population of Europeans and other Westerners. This chapter places the site in the larger context of the evolution of one of the city’s most important necropolises from the Conquest to the modern era, the Grand Champs de Morts (Les Grands Champs des Morts or ‘The Great Fields of the Dead’), and its cemetery for Protestants and Catholics, the Graveyard of the Franks, for which many tombs now located in the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery provide the only surviving record and link.

Featured Image