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 Mehmed II with the name "Galata Camii" (Galata Mosque; or alternatively "Cami-i Kebir", i.e. Great Mosque), it was given by Sultan Bayezid II to the Spanish Moors who fled the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 and came to Istanbul. In 1261, the quarter was retaken by the Byzantines, but Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1282) granted it to the Genoese in 1267 in accordance with the Treaty of Nymphaeum. The precise limits of the Genoese colony were stipulated in 1303, and they were prohibited from fortifying it. The Genoese however disregarded this, and through subsequent expansions of the walls, enlarged the