Istanbul’s water story: From cisterns to the Bosporus

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

This week's theme centers on World Water Day, observed every year on March 22, a United Nations initiative highlighting the importance of freshwater and the sustainable management of water resources. In a city defined by the Bosporus yet historically dependent on invisible reservoirs beneath its streets, water has always been both presence and absence — and an inspiration, as we mentioned in last week’s newsletter.

We start with an exhibition in Bebek that draws inspiration from ancient structures that once gathered water from forests and streams into the city, where artists create ultra-modern works. We then move to the restaurant Lacivert, which offers the rare pleasure of dining almost level with the Bosporus current. We conclude with a look at Turkey's water statistics.

Please note that some of the exhibitions may be closed over Eid al-Fitr.

Eid Mubarak and Iyi Bayramlar!

If you want to receive this newsletter or our other new weekly City Pulse newsletters — for Doha, Dubai and Riyadh — sign up here.

Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram: @citypulsealm

1. Leading the week: Playing with water

Eda Sarman’s installation “Water Must be Close By” (Photo courtesy of IBB Kultur)

In a city where water is everywhere yet never entirely secure (as its 18 million citizens complain of cuts and bills), Istanbul’s relationship with it has always been both practical and poetic. Byzantine emperors carved vast cisterns beneath the city to store winter rains and water by aqueducts. The city’s most famous cistern — the Basilica Cistern, built under Emperor Justinian I in the sixth century — once stored around 80,000 cubic meters of water beneath a forest of marble columns.

Ottoman engineers later expanded the system with fountains, reservoirs and aqueducts that quietly sustained daily life. Yet many of these structures have lost their original function as urbanization hardened the city’s surfaces and reduced the permeability that once allowed water to circulate naturally. Today, artists return to this hydraulic past as a meditation on what has been lost.

The latest example comes in Bebek Sanat, where artist Eda Sarman presents works drawn from the concept of the cistern, a place where water pauses before reentering circulation. Her project, “Playing with Water,” takes Istanbul’s historic water structures as its point of departure, exploring the layered relationship between water, the city, nature and the human body.

Sarman, who studied at Pratt Institute in New York and the Royal College of Art in London, has long explored the intersection of design, material and narrative. In this exhibition, cement, discarded objects, brightly colored tubes, reflective planes and geometric structures suggest water’s constant negotiation between containment and movement. At the same time, the works trace water’s lingering presence even in its absence: in restless seagulls that remind us of our proximity to the sea, in skittish cats or in trickles slipping through the city’s rubble.

Following water’s traces through pipes, debris and memory, the exhibition reminds visitors that beneath Istanbul’s streets lies an entire hydraulic memory — one where water is not only a resource but also the enabler — and destroyer — of urban life.

Location: Bebek Sanat Gallery, Cevdet Pasa Caddesi No:51, Bebek

Date: until June 21

2. Word on the street: Lacivert

Lacivert, which means dark blue in Turkish, at dusk. (Photo courtesy of Lacivert)

Just beneath the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge on the Asian shore of the Bosporus, Lacivert is one of Istanbul’s rare restaurants where the water feels almost within reach of your plate. A small motorboat ferries diners across from Rumeli Hisari, and the menu leans confidently into the sea: starters such as Bosporus bluefish, smoked mackerel salad and citrusy sea bass carpaccio lead into grilled seafood, seasonal Bosporus fish and elegantly plated mains rooted in Turkish coastal cooking. At sunset, when the current glints deep blue, Lacivert reminds you why Istanbul remains a city best experienced from the water.

Location: Korfez Caddesi No:57/A, Anadolu Hisarı

(Note: diners can reach the restaurant either by road on the Asian side or by the restaurant’s complimentary boat transfer from Rumeli Hisari on the European side.)

3. Istanbul diary

“Accompanying” by Filiz Piyale Onat (Photo courtesy of Gallery)

• Filiz Piyale Onat’s “Omorika” opens at Decollage Art Space. Curated by Marcus Graf, the exhibition turns landscape into a quiet meditation on displacement, ecology and memory, drawing inspiration from the Balkan Omorika spruce and the artist’s own family history of migration to Istanbul. Until April 12.

• Two Beyoglu exhibitions revisit contemporary power structures. At Piramid Sanat, Bedri Baykam’s “Baykam on Picasso: Les Demoiselles Revisited” (until Sept. 5) reinterprets Picasso’s modernist rupture through layered cultural references, while G-Art Galeri hosts “Constellations (or We Don’t Know What to Do…)” (until April 24), a group show curated by Vahap Avsar with artists including Erkan Ozgen, the artist who captured the haunting video of a deaf-mute boy explaining how ISIS killed his family in Kobane. (If you click on only one link on this newsletter, make it this link: the video “Wonderland.”)

• Osman Hamdi Bey’s “At the Mosque Door” (1891) — by the painter often cited as both the finest and the most expensive Ottoman artist — will be offered at Bonhams London on March 25 in its 19th Century Paintings and British Impressionist Art sale. The large canvas has not appeared on the market since it was acquired by the University of Pennsylvania in 1895 and carries an estimate of £2-£3 million ($2.6-$4 million).