Galata Tower (old) Galata Tower (old) The old Tower of Galata (, meaning "Great Tower") was a tower which stood on the north side of the Golden Horn in Constantinople, inside the citadel of Galata. The tower marked the northern end of the great chain, which was stretched across the mouth of the Golden Horn to the Tower of Eugenius to prevent enemy ships from entering the harbor. The tower contained a mechanism of elevation gears for raising and lowering the chain. The tower was largely destroyed by the Latin Crusaders during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, part of the Fourth Crusade,
Galata descends to the Bosphorus. "Galata" has subsequently been re-adopted by the city of Genoa in the naming of its naval museum "Galata Museo del Mare." In historic documents, Galata is often called Pera, which comes from the old Greek name for the place, Peran en Sykais, literally "the Fig Field on the Other Side." The quarter first appears in Late Antiquity as Sykai or Sycae. By the time the "Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae" was compiled in ca. 425 AD, it had become an integral part of the city as its 13th region. According to the "Notitia", it featured public baths and