One of the questions our guests ask most often is: "What does Meroddi mean?" Is it an Italian word, a surname, or simply an invented, pleasant sound? The answer is written on a stone that has stood in the same place for seven centuries, just a few hundred metres from our hotels.
The last surviving gate
Galata was once a walled city. These walls, dating from the Genoese period, encircled the district, and their gates were closed at night — a practice that continued until the 1850s. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the city expanded and Galata and Pera became connected, much of the walls was demolished; all that remained were street names such as Büyük Hendek and Küçük Hendek, along with scattered remnants.
The most valuable of those remnants is the gate that still stands today on Yanıkkapı Street: the last surviving gate of the Galata walls. And on it is an inscription dating back to the fourteenth century.
Two families in stone
According to the inscription, this gate was commissioned by two prominent noble families of the district: the D'Auria family and the De Merude family. The coats of arms of both families can still be seen on the stone today. The name of the De Merude family, also recorded in sources as Merode or Merodii, has thus lived on in the stone of Galata for seven centuries.
Meroddi is derived from the name of this family.
Why this name?
When looking for a name for a hotel collection, we had two paths before us: to find a neutral, polished word that could work anywhere — or to take our name from the place where our story unfolds. We chose the latter, because all our hotels reside in the historic buildings of Galata and Beyoğlu, just a few hundred metres from this inscription. From the Barnathan Apartments, dating back to 1892, to Pera's elegant Maison Madeleny, each of our buildings has its own name, its own era and its own story. It felt right that the name bringing these stories together under one roof should come from the district's oldest written stone: not a chain, but a collection; not a slogan, but an inscription.
If you would like to see the inscription
Yanıkkapı is in the lower part of Galata, on the Perşembepazarı side, and the road still passes in front of the gate today. With a short walk from around Galata Tower, you can stand before the stone on which our name was written seven hundred years ago. Ask our reception desks for directions, then continue discovering the district's other layers on your way back — the histories carved in stone at Barnathan, and the Tünel passing beneath our hotel.
Seven centuries ago, the family whose name we bear commissioned a gate. We, too, are opening doors on the same streets — this time for our guests.
