Hilal Özdemir
“I your faithful servant, understand that it has been your intention to erect a bridge from Galata to Stambul…” With these words Leonardo Da Vinci described in a letter to Sultan Bayezid II in 1502 how he would build the greatest single span bridge of the ancient world. Although some sources say that the letter found in the Topkapi Palace archives in 1952 was not in Da Vinci’s handwriting, a leather bound notebook belonging to him at Institute De France in Paris contains two different drawings, one of which is a bird’s-eye view, are explained in detail in Leonardo’s own hand: The bridge, which stretches from Pera to Constantinople, is 40 braccia (1 meter = 1.64 braccia) wide, 70 braccia high above the water, and 600 braccia long, in other words, 400 braccia over the water and 200 over land, and thus has its own abutments.
When converted to modern measurements we see that Da Vinci’s description fits the Golden Horn which has an average width of 244 meters and 400 braccia over water is exactly 244 meters. The entire length would have been 600 braccia that corresponds to 365 meters.
In the letter Da Vinci tells the Sultan that galleons with full sails would be able to pass under the bridge. Because, he says, the bridge will be standing 70 braccia above the water. That is 45 meters which would allow passage to the biggest vessels of the time.
Probably because Sultan Bayezid II was not convinced that the project was feasible, the idea was dropped; until it was taken up by Norwegian artist Vebjorn Sand in 2000. Vebjorn built a replica of Da Vinci’s Golden Horn Bridge, but one fourth in size, as an overpass over the motorway connecting Oslo to the nearby town of Aas. The construction was completed and inaugurated in 2001. Vebjorn continued to build replicas of Da Vinci’s bridge, this time in ice near the South Pole and last year in front of the United Nations Plaza in New York to draw world public opinion to the perils of global warming.
Da Vinci’s Golden Horn Bridge came back to Turkey when the Ministry of Culture and Tourism sponsored a documentary project realized by producer and writer Cengiz Ozdemir and director Adem Ozkul.
The 45-minute documentary shot in Istanbul, Norway, South Pole, Italy, New York and Paris triggered a public debate whether Da Vinci’s Golden Horn Bridge should really be built over the water that demarcates northern and southern parts of Istanbul. In other words, the old Christian quarters of Pera and Galata and the Moslem neighborhoods of Eyup, Sultanahmet and Beyazit.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan also appears on the documentary expressing his approval for the construction of Da Vinci’s bridge. “This project will be launched in 2010 when Istanbul becomes the Culture Capital of Europe and it will be monument to our path to membership in the European Union,” Erdogan says.
The HD format of the documentary’s DVD is available at the Istanbul Kitapcisi (The bookshop of the Metropolitan Municipality) on Istiklal.
