Yalis and Ottoman Houses

The word 'yali' comes from the Greek word 'coast' and is used to refer to the wooden summer residences in the Ottoman Empire that were built by the ambassadors and aristocrats on the shores of the Bosphorus. Today they are listed buildings and during our walk we saw some of these beautiful buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Especially beautiful is a port full of these houses where the public ferry docks. It seems to have stepped back two hundred years.