A building from Camondos, the sponsors of the Ottomans, to Abidin Dino, the world-renowned painter.. Almost everybody associates the name Camondo with the famous stairs going up to the Galata Tower. It is stated that Abraham Camondo of the famous banker family Camondo, who had escaped from the inquisition in Spain to Venice and then to Istanbul where they finally settled, had this best-known work of the family built so that his grandson did not have to climb up the slope to go to school but instead climb up and down these stairs easily. Do you know that there are numerous structures other than the Camondo Stairs, one of the most favorite photo shooting sites in Istanbul today, bearing this famous family’s name?
Through the Camondo and Partners Bank they founded in 1802, Isaac and Avram brothers created a gigantic real estate empire. In fact, when the Ottoman Empire participated in the Crimean War against the Russians beside the British, they had borrowed from the Camondo family to buy the weapons needed by the army. Partner in Dersaadet Tramway Company since its foundation, the Camondos had a part in the establishment of the first municipality in Istanbul as well. The Camondos, who worked in a building that still survives on the Banks Avenue to this day, lived in a building bearing their name, which was a bit further than the famous Dogan Building, on Serdar-i Ekrem Street.
Had built in the neoclassical style in 1861 by Avram Camondo so that all family members could live together, this four-story building is conspicuous for the wooden bay windows on the second and third stories.
When the family immigrated to France in 1872, this building they had lived in during their Istanbul years was converted into a commercial building, which has hosted numerous bankers’ offices in addition to the stores launched on the ground floor. The members of the Camondo family who have left their marks on Istanbul with numerous buildings were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis during the Second World War, where they lost their lives. However, the building bearing the family’s name has been brought into use again since the 1950s.
Abidin Dino, not only a painter but also one of the pioneers of the Modern Turkish Painting, cartoonist, author, film director, a versatile man of culture in brief, rented the loft of this building, number 24, on Serdar-i Ekrem Street, as a studio and lived and worked there for a long time. Dino’s place of preparation for his famous Port Exhibition especially, this studio was frequented by the famous poets like Orhan Veli Kanik, Oktay Rifat, Melih Cevdet and the famous writers like Sait Faik Abasiyanik, and Yasar Kemal. Abidin Dino had painted in a different color each room of this studio in which the Garip poetry movement was discussed, long and entertaining conversations were made against Istanbul’s landscape, thus making it a literally colorful place.
If you would like to see this building in which different historical textures overlap each other and take photographs of its interesting bay windows, let us remind you that you can arrive at the Camondo Building in 8 minutes by walking from Aspera Hotel Golden Horn.
