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Founded 600 years before Christ and continuously
inhabited for 25 centuries...Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul, the Paris of
the East...where to begin with such an ancient and fascinating city?
You can't just read a brochure to familiarize yourself with
its history - you have to read a library. Starting with
Constantine in the 4th century A.D., it was the capital of the Eastern
Roman Empire for nearly 1200 years. Coveted by the Muslims since
the time of Mohammed, Christian Constantinople was finally conquered in the 15th century,
whereupon it became the capital of the Ottoman Empire for the next half
millennium. A single dynasty, the Osman family, ruled from this
city until the twilight of
Empire, when Ataturk declared the country a secular, democratic
republic, and Istanbul is now Turkey's greatest city. After
living in a dusty province of Turkey for over 3 months, we finally got a
chance to visit Istanbul during a week of gusting freezing rain and heavy
snow in February. Not that we're complaining.
We had just spent a fantastically sunny and warm
week in the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya when we hopped on an
overnight 12-hour bus to Istanbul. As luck would have it, the
minute we arrived, the mercury plummeted about 40 degrees Fahrenheit,
the wind picked up, and it started to rain. Then we got on a local
train going in the wrong direction: as soon as I saw the ancient city
walls loom up on the horizon, I knew we had gone too far. We
disembarked hesitantly onto a vast, empty mud pit - a hub for local buses - and stood
stranded, unable to communicate with anyone, getting blasted
by 30 mile-an-hour horizontally moving turbo sleet. I
looked back towards the city at the crumbling fifth century walls built
by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II and immediately knew what it felt
like to be a stranger in a strange land; or rather, an outsider trying to get
in. |
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We headed back to the hotel to change into our only dry
clothes, spectacularly appropriate for sunny Mediterranean weather, and
set off, teeth chattering all the while, for
one of the most famous architectural monument in the world - the Aya
Sofya. Built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century A.D., it
was called the Hagia Sophia in Greek, or the Church of Divine Wisdom
(see the picture at the top of the page on the right). For nearly
a millennium, this was the greatest church, and perhaps building, in all
the world. The sheer size of the interior space covered by a
single dome was a stroke of genius, and it's hard to envision the
thousands of ancient workmen struggling with hand tools to erect such a
magnificent structure. Every square inch is a work of art, from
the psychedelically veined marble slices covering the walls to the
gorgeously realized gold mosaics added over the centuries. The
mosaic of Christ and John the Baptist from the early 14th century, in
the center above, is particularly captivating for the pathos it conveys
and the compassion it evokes. Paul the Silentiary,
in his Opening Ode to the church on Christmas eve of 563 A.D,
had this to say about the mosaics.: "Now the vaulting is formed of
many a little square of gold cemented together. And the golden
stream of glittering rays pours down and strikes the eyes of men so that
they can scarcely bear to look. One might say that one gazed upon
the midday sun in spring, what time he gilds each mountain height."
Most of the mosaics are in an upper gallery where men and women
worshippers were separated, reached by the eerily lit ramp Erin-Kate is
ascending in the picture on
the right. On the left you can see the giant dome soaring above,
punctuated by a clerestory of tiny windows. |
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| Sticking with the glory of the Byzantine era, let's go
to another richly detailed Christian church, the Church of the Holy
Savior, known in Greek as the Chora Church, and now referred to as the
Kariye Muzesi. This little gem was built in the 11th century by a
wealthy aristocrat, and in the following couple of hundred years, was covered
from ceiling to floor in brilliant murals and mosaics. It's kind
of a mini, primitive Sistine Chapel. Like the Aya Sofya, the
Chora Church was turned into a mosque after the conquest and only
recently opened as a museum. |
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| Amazingly enough, there is almost nothing left of the
12 centuries of Byzantine civic architecture of which, according to various
writers from the period, there was once opulent abundance. Benjamin
de Tudele, who visited one of the palaces in the 12th century, was
clearly impressed: "An infinite number of other things are to be found
there that would seem incredible if one were to describe them. To
this Palace are brought the annual tributes, both in gold and in
garments of purple and scarlet, with which the towers are filled to
bursting. So for beauty of structure and abundance of riches, this
Palace surpasses all the other palaces of the world." The
picture above on the left is the remains of the Byzantine palace of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, a lavish production in the 14th century.
Later, the palace was used by the Ottomans of the 16th and 17th
centuries as an imperial menagerie to house giraffes and elephants.
Today it is little more than a stone husk iincorporated into the ancient
city walls, which can be seen decaying in the background.
The ruins of the greatest Byzantine palace
were used as the foundation for one of the greatest mosques in the
world, the Sultan Ahmet or Blue Mosque, in the middle and right above.
The beauty of this structure, as with many grand mosques, lies in its
simplicity, elegance, and vast, intricately tiled interior.
Because Islam forbids the representation of human forms, there are no
murals or mosaics to be seen inside. |
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| Although the Byzantine palaces are all gone, the
Ottoman ones are alive and well. Above is Topkapi Palace, also
know as the Seraglio, where the Ottoman sultans lived and ruled from.
It's an enormous compound of courtyards and building, all rather plain
inside,
so you have to imagine the bustling and exotic life of the Ottoman past
to get the full
effect. The Sultan lived here with his harem of wives and children
guarded by the elite eunuchs, patrolled by the warrior caste of
non-Muslim janissaries, and administered by powerful pashas and grand
viziers. There were thousands of people roaming about, serving an empire
that stretched over a sizeable chunk of the globe, and all the goods
pillaged from far away lands were kept in the Treasury, which is open
for inspection and includes things like a hair from Mohammed's beard. |
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| On the grounds of the Topkapi Palace are several
world-class museums showcasing art from all the Ottoman lands going back
to the time of Hammurabi and Egyptian Pharoahs. From left to right is a
beautiful bust of Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the isle of Lesbos, a bold relief of two
sphinxes from a sarcophagus lid, and a sleek coffin for an Egyptian
ruler. |
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| Contemporary Istanbul is an amazing place as well.
We spent a lot of time in Beyoglu, which has been a European suburb of
Istanbul since the time of Christ through the Ottoman Empire. This
is where all the foreign embassies were located in the time of Empire
when Istanbul was the administrative capital, and it is full of ornate
European architecture with a streetcar running through the middle.
Above is a cool restaurant where we had appetizers, fish and raki, the
Turkish anise-flavored liquor, in truly native fashion. In the middle is Istiklal
Street, a hip, bustling district even in a February blizzard, and on the
right is our friend Orhan with an almond seller behind him. This
dude, the self-proclaimed "professor," wanders around the restaurant
district with a tray of fresh almonds cooled in ice. This was the
first time we had ever had fresh almonds - you peel them, pop them in
your mouth, and become addicted. Delicious. |
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In the 19th century when the Ottoman Empire had run
out of places to conquer, it began its decline and was seen as the "sick
man of Europe." To counter this impression, Sultan Abdul Mecit had
this lavish palace built to replace Topkapi as the Imperial residence,
and it's truly over the top. I've been to Hearst Castle and
Rockefeller's mansion in Newport, but this place takes the cake.
It's an immense compound, so we only saw a portion of it, but every
single nook and cranny is jammed with an odd mixture of exquisite
European art - paintings, vases, porcelain, tapestries, murals,
trompe-l'oeils, carpets, hand-tooled wood floors, and to top it all off,
a 9,000-pound chandelier. This monstrosity is in the most
grandiose, rococo super room I've ever witnessed - the Grand Hall
pictured on the bottom right. |
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Any city that has a There Might Be Giants song
written about it has to be pretty great, but Istanbul (was
Constantinople, now it's Istanbul...) is a sumptuous feast of history,
urbanity, diversity, vibrancy, and mystery. It's fit for a king,
made for a sultan, and perfect for the adventurous traveler. |
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