The cradle of civilisation rocks
It’s Turkey’s largest city — Istanbul — and goes back to 660 B.C. when it was founded as Byzantium, then on to being re-established as Constantinople and then on to its place at the head of the Ottoman empire. It boasts Byzantine churches, great mosques, museums and Roman aqueducts.
Our first stop is the Sultan Ahmet area in the heart of the old town, now the Hippodrome, for a look at the famous obelisk, Istanbul’s oldest monument dating back to the 15th century B.C., built by the Pharaoh as a memento of his victory in 390 B.C. It served as a turning point for each lap when races were held. It’s not far to the Blue Mosque from here, which epitomises Turkish architecture of the Ottoman period and was built during the reign of Sultan Ahmet in 1609, with its giant dome and six skyscraping minarets.
As the legend goes, the Sultan had asked the architect Mehmet Aga for a mosque with golden minarets, but as the word ‘gold’ sounded like the number six in Turkish, the mosque was built with six minarets instead — in honour of each Ottoman ruler, he said in justification.
The Hagia Sophia forms a part of the ‘triad’ of great monuments of Istanbul. Established as a church during the reign of emperor Justinian the Great, it was later converted into a mosque by the Ottoman emperor Sultan Mehmet, but the biblical frescoes remain.
The Topkapi palace completes the triad. The arched entrance with its twin towers and cannon openings above give the palace its name. Its administrative centre was where the viziers, chaired by the grand vizier, met four times a week while the Sultan sat behind a caged window in a room above and observed, unseen.
The palace library houses 4,000 manuscripts of ancient texts, while another room has the footprints, tooth and hair, stored in vials, of the Prophet Mohammed.
A cruise on the Bosphorous Strait, which separates Asia Minor and Europe, while linking the Marmara Sea with the Black Sea, offers a panoramic view of groves, tea gardens, cafes, bars, restaurants under summer palaces, mansions with wide pillared porticoes and fortresses.
The history notwithstanding, one can just walk along the streets where crusaders and janissaries once marched, or stroll along the boulevard and enjoy the whisper of the Marmara Sea. After a peep into the spice bazaar for a glimpse of inconceivable variety, one can lunch or dine on the kebabs sold on the streets and slake the thirst with the ruby-red pomegranate juice sold on the streets every ten yards.
Istanbul has, in the last two decades, experienced a boom in its economy due to tourism and is now reclaiming its stance as capital of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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