On 13 April 1929, six years after the Republic of Turkey was founded, a fire swept through the neighbourhood and largely destroyed it, with 207 houses going up in flames.

Once a predominantly Greek Orthodox and Armenian neighbourhood,[1][2] its population today mostly consists of Turks who moved there after the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923.

The quarter started life in the 16th century as a residential area for Greeks from the island of Chios who were settled here to work in the principal dockyards of the Ottoman Empire in the neighbouring Kasımpaşa quarter; they originally lived in Kasımpaşa but retreated uphill to a new area when their church there was turned into a mosque.

[citation needed][3] In 1793 Sultan Selim III decreed that only Greeks would be allowed to live in Tatavla, a distinction it shared with the small Aegean town of Ayvalık.

[7] A vivid description of pre-First World War Tatavla is to be found in Maria Iordanidou's 1963 novel Loxandra, which is based on the experiences of her grandmother.