An Italian Architect’s First Visit to Ankara: Giulio Mongeri – 1897

Giulio Mongeri is an Italian architect credited as behind some of the most important structures all across Turkey, but foremost in Istanbul and Ankara. He served the Ottoman state in the first quarter of the 20th century, and provided a noteworthy contribution to Ankara in the Early Republican era. Mongeri carried out his first visit to Ankara in 1897. His observations of the era are extremely interesting. Mongeri’s notes on this visit were published over a few weeks in the 25th volume of Illustrazione Italiana journal, which rarely sees daylight nowadays and is barely spoken of in the Ankara research literature. As a contribution to Turkish publications about Ankara, this study aims to evaluate this visit and compare it from various perspectives to other publications and the Ankara of today.First of all, new digital imaging was carried out in place of the low-resolution digitalized copies published by the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism, then a field examination of Mongeri’s route was carried out, and following study comparing this to historical sources, it was made ready for detailed investigations to be carried out by later researchers. On certain issues, Mongeri was not well informed, but on many others his deep interest in history emerges thanks to the education he had received in Milan. These travel notes may catch the eye as showing from an earlier age the basics of the historicist approach he would take in his professional life as a historian.