At the beginning of the twentieth century, fashionable Pera had an attraction that might seem surprisingly modern: a roller-skating rink known as the Skating Palace.
Opened around 1909–1910, just off the Grand Rue de Pera, today’s İstiklal Avenue, the Skating Palace stood behind the prestigious Cercle d’Orient. At a time when Pera was the cosmopolitan heart of Istanbul, the rink quickly became a fashionable meeting place, attracting Levantines, Europeans and members of the Ottoman elite.
Visitors came not simply to skate, but also to see and be seen. Men and women glided around the rink on roller skates while music accompanied them, turning the new pastime into a distinctly social form of entertainment. Contemporary cartoons and photographs capture something of this unusual world: Ottoman gentlemen in fezzes sharing the rink with Europeans dressed in the latest fashions.
The Skating Palace belonged to a wider culture of leisure that flourished in late Ottoman Pera. The neighbourhood was filled with theatres, cafés, restaurants, hotels, balls and other forms of European-style entertainment. Roller skating was simply one of the latest novelties to arrive in a district fascinated by modern urban life.
Cercle d’Orient
The location itself has an interesting afterlife. The Skating Palace stood behind the Cercle d’Orient and formed part of the site that would later develop into the entertainment complex associated with Melek Cinema, subsequently renamed Emek Cinema. Thus, a place remembered by later generations for cinema had once echoed with the sound of roller skates.
For a brief moment in the early twentieth century, fashionable Istanbul came here for something rather different: to put on a pair of roller skates and glide around Pera to the sound of music.
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