The castle he built in 1452, the summer before he took Constantinople, is what gives our village its character and its name. Roumeli Hissar means Roman, Greek, European, or western castle, distinguishing us from the opposite village of Andolou Hissar, where stand the ruins of the earlier fortress of Baïezid the Thunderbolt. To see the two round towers of Roumeli Hissar facing each other across a ravine, the polygonal keep at the water’s edge, the crenelated walls and turrets irregularly enclosing the steep triangle between them, you would never guess that they sprang up in about the time of a New York apartment-house. Yet that they did so is better attested than the legend that their arrangement reproduces the Arabic letters of their builder’s name. Having demanded permission of the Greek emperor to put up a hunting-lodge on the Bosphorus, the Conqueror proceeded to employ an army of masons, in addition to his own troops, with orders to destroy any buildings they found convenient to use for material. So it is that the shafts and capitals of columns, the pieces of statues, the fragments of decorative brick and marble, that give so interesting a variety of detail to the structure are a last dim suggestion of the ancient aspects of the village. One of its Byzantine names was that of the _Asomaton_, the Bodiless Angels, to whom a monastery in the place was dedicated, while earlier still a temple of Hermes had existed there. In three months the hunting-lodge was ready for occupancy, and the Sultan called it Cut-Throat Castle, a play on the Turkish word which means both throat and strait. It put the Bosphorus at his mercy, as a Venetian galley that went to the bottom under a big stone cannon-ball was the first to testify—though the Genoese commanded the mouth of the Black Sea from another pair of castles. But in spite of their hasty construction the walls have withstood the decay and the earthquakes of nearly five hundred years. Will as much be said of existing New York apartment-houses in the twenty-fifth century? [Illustration: Cut-Throat Castle from the water] [Illustration: The castle of Baïezid the Thunderbolt]