The Maiden's Tower — Kız Kulesi in Turkish — sits on a small islet at the mouth of the Bosphorus and has accumulated roughly two thousand years of competing ownership claims, from Byzantine customs post to Ottoman lighthouse to a quarantine station during the 19th century. This 1997 issue belongs to a period when Turkey's chronic inflation had rendered lira denominations nearly abstract; three million lira was a practical face value for a gold coin only because the currency had already shed most of its purchasing power through the decade's persistent monetary instability.
The Maiden's Tower — Kız Kulesi in Turkish — sits on a small islet at the mouth of the Bosphorus and has accumulated roughly two thousand years of competing ownership claims, from Byzantine customs post to Ottoman lighthouse to a quarantine station during the 19th century. This 1997 issue belongs to a period when Turkey's chronic inflation had rendered lira denominations nearly abstract; three million lira was a practical face value for a gold coin only because the currency had already shed most of its purchasing power through the decade's persistent monetary instability.