German Fountain

About German Fountain

The German Fountain sits at the northern end of the old Hippodrome, in the square now called At Meydani in Istanbul's Fatih district. It was a gift from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II to commemorate his 1898 visit to the Ottoman capital, and it went up a few years later, in 1900 to 1901. The design is deliberately different from the Ottoman street fountains you'll see elsewhere in the city. It's a domed, octagonal pavilion in a neo-Byzantine style, with eight columns holding up a canopy and gold mosaic work lining the underside of the dome. Look up at that inner surface and you'll spot the monograms of both Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdulhamid II, marking the two rulers behind the gift.

Because it stands right on the Hippodrome, most people come across the German Fountain without planning to. It's a short walk from the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and it sits close to the Egyptian obelisk and the Serpentine Column, the ancient monuments that line the same square. Guided walks through the old city, both the half-day morning routes and the full-day ones, tend to pass it as part of the Hippodrome stretch, usually with a brief stop to explain who built it and why. It isn't a ticketed attraction and there's no interior to tour, so a visit is quick: a few minutes to walk around it, read the mosaics, and take photos.

The fountain is out in the open and reachable at any time, which makes it an easy thing to fit in either before or after the bigger sites nearby. It photographs well in morning light, before the square fills up, and it gives some shade on hot afternoons. Since it's part of a public square rather than a building you enter, there are no opening hours or dress-code rules to worry about here, though the surrounding mosques do have their own.