Refunctioning and protection measures of Eminönü Inns: IV. Vakıfhan

Eminönü forms the core of İstanbul in the commercial sense and it has a settlement past of thousand years. It is also an active commercial center in present. Eminönü district which is inside the grade one conservancy district and Fatih Municipality borders, has a wide territory, including Beyazıd (coverd Bazaar), Unkapanı, Eminönü neighbourhoods. It is called as Historical Peninsula region because there are a lot of registered buildings in the aforementioned wide area. Upon the retrogression of the Ottoman Empire economy in the XIX. century, some reforms were made within westemization movements. These reforms realized many changes in the Ottoman Empire's economy as well as its architecture. Furthermore, the Inns began to lose their previous importance depending an changes in reproduction ways and trading routes. Starting with unuse of these inns, some physical deformations, usage of these buildings apart form their original characteristics (building supplements and using them as store) by people caused to lose their characteristics in the texture of the city and their original architectural characteristics. Some laws and protection decrees have been prepared in order to prevent the loss of historical texture and some of the inns which were actively used in the past, have been protected, and some of them have been assigned new functions in accord the regional needs. Since the given decrees have become deficient and insufficient by time, they have been cancelled or some changes have been made to these decrees. In this scope the position, architecture and characteristics of Eminönü Inns in the historical texture, have been started to protect according to the materials used. In this study the effect of protection decrees made with respect to the interios of Eminönü Inns, has been studied. Key words: Eminönü Inns, Office Inns, IV. Vakıfhan and interior