Kuleli
Military School

The Barracks Rising from the Sea

Kuleli Military High School was built during the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid as a Cavalry Barracks. Located on the Asian side of the Bosphorus between Çengelköy and Kandilli, the building became known as "Kuleli" (The Towered) due to its iconic twin towers.

The architectural structure is a massive masonry block. Following the changes in military education after 2016, the building remains under the National Defense University. While it has been the subject of museum conversion debates, it currently undergoes meticulous restoration to preserve its historic fabric.

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The Balyan Blueprint

The building that gives Cengelkoy its skyline was not designed as a school at all. Sultan Abdulmecid I commissioned it as a cavalry barracks, and construction was completed in 1843 under Garabet Balyan, the Armenian-Ottoman court architect whose family left its signature on much of the nineteenth-century Bosphorus, from imperial palaces to churches and hospitals. Two years later, in 1845, the sultan converted the building into a military school, the institution that would carry the Kuleli name for the next century and a half.

The twin towers flanking the main entrance are the reason for the nickname. "Kuleli" simply means "the one with towers" in Turkish, and the symmetrical pair still frames every photograph taken of the building from the water. Arched windows, heavy stonework, and a facade that runs almost the full length of the Cengelkoy waterfront complete a design that mixes late Ottoman military architecture with the Western influences fashionable among Bosphorus builders of the era.

The school itself moved in and out of the building more than once. Students relocated into the Kuleli barracks in 1872, only for the building to be converted into a military hospital during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878. Classes resumed at Kuleli in 1879, and the school went on to become one of the oldest continuously operating military high schools in the country, training generations of officer candidates on the same stretch of shoreline.

2016 and the Museum Question

Kuleli's long run as a functioning military high school ended abruptly after the coup attempt of 15 July 2016. Along with the country's other military high schools, Kuleli was shut down by statutory decree on 31 July 2016, and the building passed into the hands of what is now Turkey's National Defense University (Milli Savunma Universitesi). Today the campus operates as the university's Foreign Languages School, where cadets who have been accepted into the war colleges spend roughly a year on language training before continuing their military education elsewhere.

A second life as a national museum has been discussed publicly since at least 2017, when the Ministry of Culture and Tourism first announced plans to restore the building for public use. The idea keeps resurfacing in the Turkish press, most recently in news coverage from early 2026, but a firm opening date has never materialized. Reporting on the subject points to an unresolved disagreement between the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism over how much of the roughly 180-donum grounds surrounding the building, not just the historic structure itself, would transfer to the museum project. Until that is settled, Kuleli remains an active military education campus rather than a public attraction.

Seeing Kuleli Without Going Inside

Because the National Defense University still uses the building, there is no ticketed entry and no general public tour, and that is unlikely to change until the museum question above is resolved. What travelers can do is see the building from outside, and by most accounts the view from the water beats anything available on land. A Bosphorus boat or one of the public ferries that pass between Kandilli and Uskudar gives an unobstructed look at the full length of the facade and both towers at once, the same vantage point that appears in almost every well-known photograph of Kuleli.

On land, the coastal road that runs along the Cengelkoy-Kandilli shoreline gets you close to the perimeter walls and gardens, though the towers photograph better from a slight distance. The building is also lit at night, which makes the shoreline stretch a popular stop on evening Bosphorus rides. Traffic on that same coastal road narrows considerably on weekends, and street parking near the school is limited, so travelers relying on a rental car or taxi should plan to be flexible about timing.

Cengelkoy: Breakfast Under the Plane Tree

Kuleli sits at the edge of Cengelkoy, a village-like neighborhood that has kept its own identity despite being folded into greater Istanbul. The square by the ferry landing is built around a plane tree said to be somewhere between 800 and 900 years old, the centerpiece of the Cengelkoy Tarihi Cinaralti tea garden. Locals still bring their own breakfast spreads to eat under its branches with tea and a Bosphorus view, a tradition that predates the neighborhood's current popularity with visitors.

The neighborhood is also known, somewhat unexpectedly, for its cucumbers. Small, thin-skinned Cengelkoy cucumbers have been grown and sold here for generations and show up on breakfast tables across the district. Beyond the square, the waterfront is lined with cafes and simple restaurants that stay open from early breakfast through late dinner, making Cengelkoy a natural place to pause before or after visiting the Kuleli shoreline.

Along the Same Shore

Kuleli is one stop on a longer run of historic sites along the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Heading south toward the first bridge, our Beylerbeyi Palace guide covers the nineteenth-century imperial summer residence closest to Uskudar. Heading north, Kandilli is only a short walk away and home to the Adile Sultan Pavilion guide, while continuing further along the water toward the second bridge brings you to the medieval fortress covered in our Anadolu Hisari travel guide.