Telgen Vacation Report

Istanbul, December 2000

Okay, so it's the end of the year, Bill has few if any vacation days remaining, and we still want to travel. In England, Christmas is followed by Boxing Day, making a four-day weekend, so we can travel then. But where to go that'll be open over Christmas? Istanbul proved the perfect solution, being exotic, historical, and not on holiday, so we flew in on Friday night, prepared to explore this fabled center of Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. Our first visit was to Topkapi Palace, built by Mehmet the Conqueror in the mid-1470s. It's a large complex of buildings and courtyards, and today there are several museums housed within. We saw an exhibition of arms and armor (including Mehmet's sword); a treasury with various jewel-encrusted thrones and ornamental goodies; and a collection of holy relics, including the prophet Mohammed's sword, cloak, beard hair, and footprints, all of which can be viewed to the accompaniment of a man reading from the Koran—quite impressive. Another interesting area is the harem, which was home to between 400 and 800 women, mainly slaves, who hoped to gain status by having the sultan's child. (Or even better, have your son become sultan, making you "Valide Sultan," or mother of the sultan.) You enter the harem by the guard rooms that were occupied by the African eunuchs who were the only men, outside the sultan and his sons, who were allowed to enter. There are some 400 rooms in the Harem, but only twelve or so are open to tour, including those of the "Valide Sultan" and the sultan himself. The extraordinary tiled walls and ornately carved wooden doors of the harem still survive, making it easy to visualize how these chambers might have looked in their prime.

The Topkapi Palace complex also contains various pavilions and kiosks with wonderful views over the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, and each one has a specific function or commemorates a specific event. This beautifully tiled room where David is standing is the, ulp, Circumcision Room. When the Sultan's sons reached a certain age, they would be taken to this room with great pomp and ceremony to, well, have a little taken off the top. We saw a couple of artworks (prints or tapestries) depicting the procession, and the princes looked to be somewhere around twelve when this occurred. So, it's good to be the king, but not so much fun to be the prince. Maybe they distracted themselves by looking at the beautiful tiles....

Our second day in Istanbul was favored with much drier weather, so we spent it walking around the Old City, which has some of the area's most famous sights. Here is the Aya Sofia, aka the Hagia Sophia, which was built as a basilica in the sixth century by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great. When Mehmet II conquered the city for the Ottomans in 1453, he immediately converted the Aya Sofia into a mosque by painting over the mosaic icons (not permitted by Islam), removing the marble crosses, and hanging several huge wooden medallions covered with Islamic calligraphy. The four minarets (the towers used to call worshippers to prayer) were added later. When Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic of Turkey, he declared the site a museum. The golden mosaics have since been restored, and the wooden medallions still hang inside as well, giving visitors a chance to imagine the building as both church and mosque. There was restoration work going on during our visit, with a huge scaffold beneath the central dome, so the space within felt somewhat smaller than I expected the fourth-largest cathedral in the world to be, even though you could wander along the upper levels. It was very impressive, none the less. Similarly large and imposing was the nearby Basilica Cistern, an underground reservoir built by Emperor Contantine over 1500 years ago. You cross the street from the Aya Sofia and you enter this huge underground chamber, almost 10,000 square meters in area, supported by 336 columns at least five meters high. Some of the stone was pilfered from pre-Christian monuments, as a couple of columns have Medusa heads as their base. It was a very atmospheric place to visit, being dark and damp but illuminated by colored lights and filled with classical music. If you remember a scene in the James Bond classic From Russia with Love (the best of the Bonds, in my opinion) where the hero motorboats along an underground route, well, this is where it was filmed.

The other highlight of the Old City, located just across a small park from the Aya Sofia, is the Blue Mosque, or Sultanahmet Camii. It was built in the very early 1600s by the Sultan Ahmet I and was controversial for its design. At the time, only the mosque at the Kaaba in Mecca had six minarets, and so the Blue Mosque's six minarets were seen as somewhat blasphemous. Now, of course, it's considered one of the most magnificent shrines in the Muslim world—and rightly so. The part of the interior that is open to tourists (the mosque is, of course, still in use) is covered by the intricately inscribed blue tiles that give it its name, and the central dome is an awe-inspiring 80 feet high. There are numerous stained-glass windows, and dozens of lamps are suspended from the top of the roof to just about eight feet off the ground.

In this picture of the Blue Mosque, you can also see part of the Ancient Hippodrome that once occupied this site. The Hippodrome was the center of Byzantine politics, as well as the site for chariot races and gladiatorial contests. In the picture's foreground you can see the Egyptian Obelisk, which originally stood in Thebes around 1500 BC, but was brought to Constantinople by Constantine the Great in the fourth century AD. There are many other such reminders of Istanbul's long and rich history. Besides the Hippodrome and the nearby Basilica Cistern, there are remnants of the Byzantine emperors' palace, which once stood on the site of the Blue Mosque. These remnants are now a Mosaic Museum, where you can walk among several restored sixth-century mosaics of mythological and hunting scenes. It is believed that this area, just behind the Blue Mosque, was a pathway that led from the royal rooms to the imperial box at the Hippodrome. The mosaics, besides being beautiful, also conveyed a rich sense of history.

Having spent two days thoroughly exploring the Old City area of Istanbul, on our third day we thought we'd go a little farther afield. The city of Istanbul actually straddles the Bosphorus, with portions on both the European and Asian continents. So what's the best way to sample the vast area of metropolitan Istanbul? Why, by ferry, of course! Although there are two major bridges that cross the Bosphorus, ferry boats serve as a major form of public transportation, and so for less than two dollars a piece (David was free), we got a round-trip ticket for the ninety-minute ferry journey up the Bosphorus. Along the way you can see Topkapi Palace, as well as several other stately mansions of the rich and royal. You also can see less intricate, but just as lovely, small villas which are quite popular in the summer. (Not so much in December. It was only about 45°F, if that, the whole time we were there.) There is also evidence of the Ottoman invasion in two impressive castles that flank the Bosphorus, the Rumeli Hisari (Fortress of Europe) and the Anadolu Hisari (Fortress of Asia); they were built by Mehmet the Conqueror and his predecessor Murad II, respectively, and were intended to prevent anyone coming to the aid of besieged Constantinople from the Black Sea.

It wasn't until we reached the northern part of the Bosphorus that we actually got off the boat and explored around. The final stop is on the Asian side of the strait, at the village of Anadolu Kavagi. Besides being noted for its fish restaurants, the village is home to the ruins of an old Genoese Fortress, which you reach after an invigorating uphill climb of about twenty minutes. You can see from this picture that there isn't much left of the fortress—just a few outer walls and the remnants of what was probably a guard tower—but the views are wonderful. Here we were looking south, down the Bosphorus toward the Sea of Marmara, but there were equally fine views to the north, of the Black Sea. We couldn't really make out the Symplegades, or Clashing Rocks, that were one of the trials that Jason and his Argonauts faced, but it was fun telling David the story anyway.

So that was our trip to Istanbul (and yes, we did wander through the Grand Bazaar, but shopping doesn't make for exciting travelogue, so I'll skip that part). It made a great cap to our travels in 2000, as this year we not only spent time in Europe and North America, but hit Africa and Asia for the first time as well. Keep watching this space—we've still got eighteen months left in our tour, and lots more interesting trips planned.

This website designed using

Text and photos copyright © 2001 by Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.