Five Centuries of Water: Dams and Forest Paths in Belgrad Forest

1. 01
   Exploration

   Understand Why the Forest Was Preserved

   Enter through the Bahçeköy gate and start with the real reason this forest survived: not for scenery, but because it protected Istanbul's drinking water basin. The Ottomans banned tree cutting and settlement here. Between 1554 and 1564, Mimar Sinan's Kırkçeşme system carried water through thirty-three aqueducts to five hundred eighty fountains.

   Belgrad Ormanı Bahçeköy Kapısı, Istanbul, Turkey
2. 02
   History

   Read the History of the First Dam

   Visit Topuzlu Bent in Bentler Nature Park, the oldest of the park's three dams. It was commissioned in 1750 by Mahmud I and became the first link in the Taksim water system. This is a masonry gravity dam, holding water by its own weight with no other mechanism. Historic fountains in the park still flow today.

   Topuzlu Bent, Istanbul, Turkey
3. 03
   Culture

   Find the Dam Built by a Valide Sultan

   Continue to Valide Bendi, built in 1797 by Mihrişah Valide Sultan, the mother of Selim III. It was the second dam of the Taksim system, built forty-seven years after the previous one. In the Ottoman world, water infrastructure was considered a charitable public work, and fountains, sebils, and dams were among the most visible civic contributions made by royal women.

   Valide Bendi, Istanbul, Turkey
4. 04
   History

   See the Last Dam in the Sequence

   Reach Sultan Mahmud Bendi, also known as Yenibent, the final dam of the trio. It dates to 1839 and was originally known simply as the New Dam. Built eighty-nine years after the first one, it completes the sequence and makes one thing clear: the city's thirst never ended, and each generation added another dam on top of the previous system.

   Sultan Mahmud Bendi (Yenibent), Istanbul, Turkey
5. 05
   Nature

   Walk Through a Garden Decades in the Making

   Explore Atatürk Arboretum, designed in 1949 after a proposal by a forestry professor, with its layout created by French botanist Camille Guine, invited from the Sorbonne. Because of funding shortages, it only opened in 1982 under its current name, in the centennial year of Atatürk's birth. Inside are more than two thousand woody plant taxa.

   Atatürk Arboretumu, Istanbul, Turkey
6. 06✦
   Nature

   Walk 6.5 Kilometers on Red Cinder

   Finish at the Neşet Suyu walking trail, the forest's best-known route. Its red cinder surface runs for six and a half kilometers, with distance markers and stretches of shade. The trail is named after forestry professor Neşet Bey, who died in 1924, and an inscription was erected in his memory in 1953. Around the route, you can also find the remains of a cistern and the mihrab of an open-air prayer ground.

   Neşetsuyu Tabiat Parkı, Belgrad Ormanı, İstanbul

Check opening hours before you go. Hours, access conditions and weather can change.