Blue Mosque - 1616

March 2002

I was heading to Romania to visit my friends, and I stopped in Istanbul "on the way." I spent two days wandering about Istanbul, 9th largest city in the world, steeped in history and replete with monuments.

First Day The first day I wandered about the old city, the walled city of Constantine and Justinian, capital of the eastern Roman Empire until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1454. The Hippodrome is a broad plaza. The Blue Mosque is on one side, the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art is on the other. Byzantine Emperors staged chariot races here. Three columns dominate one end. The first (above, right) was erected by Emperor Constantine VII in the 10th century. The Serpentie Column (above, right, foreground) was brought from Delphi by the Emperor Constantine in 326. The most spectacular is the Obelisk, built in Luxor, Egypt a long, long time ago. The guidebook that a terribly insistent fellow sold me between the columns says that it is from the 15th century BC. It was brought to Constantinople by Theodosius I in 390 AD. It sits on a marble base inscribed in Greek. I don't know what it says. It's Greek to me.

Anyasofia - Hagia Sofia, onof the largest and most spectacular churches in the world, was built by the Emperor Justinian in 537 AD. After the "fall" of Constantinople in 1454 it became a mosque. Today it's a museum and an international treasure. Mosaic at left shows Constantine and Justinian presenting Church and State to God.

Topkapi Palace and the old city walls

The Mosque of Suleyman The Magnificent - 1557

I think my favorite old thing was the Basilica Cistern, built by the Emperor Justian to help supply the city's growing water needs. It's dark and dank; water drips from the ceiling. In one corner there's a small coffee house, and a small stage out over the water, and a Turkish orchestra playing with unfamiliar instruments, the strange sounds resonating in the subterranean chamber. The Minerva Column at right was salvaged from some earlier site to add a beauty and irony to the project.

Second Day in Istanbul