Located in the center of European Istanbul, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery has served as the city’s main burial place for Protestants and others since its opening in 1859. It has tremendous historical value, with heritage from much earlier than the nineteenth century. Some of its monuments date as far back as the 1600s, having been moved to Feriköy from a former cemetery in Istanbul’s famed Grand Champs des Morts, which had served the Protestant community for almost three hundred years before 1859.

This lecture, in celebration of the Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe’s 2023 Week of Discovering European Cemeteries, will summarize the origins and history of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery and discuss in detail some of the oldest memorials in “Monument Row,” the cemetery’s most iconic spot containing funerary monuments predating the cemetery itself. It will also describe the efforts under way to document this rich legacy and preserve the cemetery both as a heritage site and active burial ground.

Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal (PhD, University of Cambridge, 2015) is a historian of Istanbul in the early twentieth century. Since 2019, he has been assistant director of the British Institute At Ankara (BIAA), which he represents on the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative.

Brian Johnson (PhD, University of Washington, 1999) is the librarian of the Istanbul branch of the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) and a member of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative. He has lived in Istanbul since 1993 and been involved with projects and research at the cemetery since 2001.

The lecture is at 17.00 19.00 İstanbul time, Saturday 3 June 2023. You can download the event flyer here. Please click here for the zoom link.