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 was built in place of a 6th-century Byzantine church in Galata. This chapel was significantly enlarged in 1325 by the Dominican friars, who officially renamed it as the Church of San Domenico, but local residents continued to use the original denomination of San Paolo. In 1407, Pope Gregory XII, in order to ensure the maintenance of the church, conceded indulgences to the visitors of the Monastery of San Paolo in Galata. The building is known today as the "Arap Camii" (Arab Mosque) because a few years after its conversion into a mosque (between 1475 and 1478) under the Ottoman Sultan