İzmir Clock Tower

About this place

This is the image İzmir chooses for itself: it is the emblem of the Metropolitan Municipality, it turns up on every fridge magnet, and in the background of most of the city's wedding photos. The tower went up in 1901 to mark twenty-five years of Sultan Abdülhamid II on the throne, and its designer, Raymond Charles Péré, was a French architect from the Levantine community of Europeans who then lived in the city. That is why it reads in two languages at once: a European iron frame inside, and on the outside white marble, muqarnas, star-filled diamond reliefs and Ottoman-revival crenellations. It rises 25 metres on an octagonal base ringed by four round fountains, and the four clock faces near the top, each 75 cm across, are said to have been a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II. Let us be plain: this is a monument you photograph, not one you enter. No tickets, no doors, no opening hours. You arrive in Konak Square, find the tower in the middle of it surrounded by several hundred pigeons and people scattering seed for them, take your pictures, and you are done in a quarter of an hour. What rewards a second look is the detail: the North African-style columns around the fountains, the carving in the marble, and the top storey that has collapsed twice, in the 1928 earthquake and again in 1974, when the clock stopped at 02:04 in the small hours, the moment the quake struck, and was rebuilt each time. A full restoration between February and September 2019 has left it looking as sharp as it ever has. The good news is that it costs you no detour. Konak Square is the hub of modern İzmir: the Konak ferry pier is a few steps away, the metro and tram stations carry the square's name, and the waterfront cafés are directly behind the tower. On the far side stands the tiny tiled Yalı Mosque of 1755, and beyond it the lanes of the covered Kemeraltı Bazaar begin, which is the real half-day in this part of town. The Konak Pier shopping centre on the seafront is a five-minute walk. Best light is the golden hour, when the floodlights come up on the marble, or early morning before the square fills. At weekends and in high summer a people-free shot is nearly impossible, and August sun on white marble is merciless, so come before eleven or after five. The square is dead flat and easy with a pushchair, and small children will like the pigeons a great deal more than the tower.