Searching for Byzantium

View of Golden Horn from Topkapi Palace

When I first spoke with my mother upon my return from our visit to Istanbul, I explained that it was known as Byzantium when the Greeks first founded it in the 7^th century BC, but when Roman emperor Constantine made it capital of the eastern half of the Empire in the 3^rd century AD, it became known as Constantinople;  finally, after the Ottomans conquered it in the 15^th century they renamed it Istanbul.  Something clicked, and she started to hum an old song that played on the city's various names.  This confusion about names is not coincidental, but represents a fundamental reality about the City Formerly Known as Constantinople (and Before That as Byzantium) – Istanbul has many faces and even more layers of reality.  After nine days there, The Spouse and I realized that we had only begun to scratch the surface.

Our opportunity to visit came through a conference at one of the city’s universities related to TS’s work and we added weekends and a couple of vacation days to make a long visit.  By chance the hotel connected to the conference was located in an area called the New District.  This turned out to be perfect for our studies of Istanbul.  A vigorous walk took us to most of the “must-see” places in the Old City, but we could easily return to something closer to normal Istanbul.

I have long puzzled over how to best describe our experience.  I have not traveled as widely as some – unlike Younger Sister who was in the Peace Corps in Mali, I have never been to Africa, nor to Asia.  Istanbul – with its minareted mosques and veiled women – is easily the most exotic place I have been.  Yet, with some 18 million people, metropolitan Istanbul is a major modern city, with gleaming new underground metro stations and efficient tram and bus networks.  Beyond the facile juxtaposition of tradition and modernity is the way that the city seems to encompass both, if not effortlessly, at least in a seemingly creative tension.

View from Our Hotel Window

Perhaps the best way to illustrate what I mean is to simply describe what we saw. 

We arrived at Atatürk International Airport – named for Mustafa Kamel Paşa, founder of modern Turkey after the post-World-War I collapse of the Ottoman Empire (he became known as Atatürk,  “Father of the Turks.”)  He launched a program of social and political reform that included establishing a secular republic, introducing a Roman alphabet in place of the Arabic one, emancipating women and encouraging Western dress.  Appropriately, the airport is modern and efficient – signs, fortunately, were in English as well as Turkish.  The bus ride through the sprawling metropolitan area showed low-rise buildings, of recent, if undistinguished construction.  Our hotel in the New District was completely modern.  And yet… the man who showed us to our room confirmed our guidebooks’ warning not to drink tapwater.  Istanbul’s water is chlorinated, but everyone drinks bottled water.  It is inexpensive, but I hate to think of the vast amount of waste produced.

View of New District from Galata Bridge

We headed out to explore.  Our hotel, the Marmara Pera, stands next to the famous Pera Palace hotel, opened in 1892 by the builder of the Orient Express to provide suitable housing for European travelers.  It was placed here, on a hill across the picturesquely-named Golden Horn river/estuary from the endpoint of the Orient Express in the old city, because this area was the home for foreigners in Istanbul.  It had been that way since the 13^th century when Genoese traders were allowed to settle here in return for their help in defeating Venetians who had invaded the city during the Fourth Crusade.  At that time Constantinople was still Christian, but the invading Europeans looted it anyway.  (Are you beginning to get a sense of how complicated this city’s history is?)

Taking our way down narrow cobblestone streets we pass Galata Tower, built by the Genoese in 1348 as a watchtower.  With its distinctive conical roof it is one of the few remarkable buildings on this side of the river; recently an attractive public square has been set out around its base, ringed by pleasant outdoor cafés.  We buy a packet of pistachio nuts from one of the ubiquitous street vendors and munch as we continue downhill.  (There is an underground funicular line running between the crest of the hill and the riverside, but we never take it, having been conditioned by our year in Switzerland to hill walking.)

When we reach the bottom we race across several lanes of traffic to reach Galata Bridge – vowing ever after to take the subway passage to preserve life and limb.  There is actually little automobile traffic through the narrow streets of the older parts of the city, but it all seems to have been shunted into major thoroughfares, which have few crosswalks.

From the bridge we have a striking view encompassing the oldest parts of Istanbul, the hills of the New District, and the Asian part of the city across the Bosphorus Strait.  Most buildings are only a few stories high, allowing the city’s mosques to stand out everywhere, with their massive domes and tall slender minarets.  We hear the call for late afternoon prayers.  The sound is familiar from media reproductions but still exotic, an emphatic reminder that we are not in Kansas anymore.  Instead of climbing to the top of the minarets to call the faithful to prayer, Imams now use loudspeakers, but their voices are still live not pre-recorded.  Though there are many mosques within sight, it is hard to hear the calls over the roar of traffic on the bridge.

We climb back up the hill via a street lined with small shops, most selling electronics and musical instruments, with here and there one with bright tourist trinkets.   We come to Ĭstiklâl Cadessi, or Freedom Avenue, heart and soul of the New District.  Once known as the Grand Rue of Pera, it was carved out of a maze of small lanes in the 19^th century and is lined with European-style apartment buildings, some recently restored and many in need of urgent attention.  Today it is pedestrian-only and a major shopping and entertainment area, with virtually every chain store one might find in an American mall or British High Street, plus countless unique cafés, restaurants and shops.  An old-fashioned trolley runs down the middle, usually overflowing with tourists snapping photographs.  Ĭstiklâl is bustling with Saturday afternoon shoppers, but when we return after having dinner at a lovely seafood restaurant off the main drag the crowd has swelled to completely fill both sides of the street.  Clearly, this is The Place To Be for young Istanbul on a Saturday night – couples and packs of young men or women (many wearing scarves) stroll up the street, stopping to buy ice cream at a shop or an ear of corn grilled over an open fire.

On Sunday we begin our serious work as travelers, to work our way through the list of Must-See sights.  First is Haghia Sophia (Divine Wisdom), the 6^th century Byzantine church built by Emperor Justinian, converted by the Ottomans into a mosque and now officially a museum.  It is dominated by a massive dome – 185 feet high and roughly 105 feet in diameter – that creates a nave with enough room to easily shelter Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral.  Largest in the world at the time and for many centuries thereafter, the dome had many imitators – one, notably, was Venice’s St. Marks, which had so enthralled us last fall.  The Ottomans were so taken with the architectural form that for centuries it was the standard for mosques.

Much of the surface of the nave and outer rooms are covered with non-figurative mosaics, but to our disappointment few representative mosaics have survived.  Islamic tradition forbids representation of human figures and after the Ottoman conquest the Christian images were painted over.

The few that survived and were uncovered after the building became a government museum in the 1930s give some idea of the power of Byzantine iconography.

One of our guidebooks explained that many of the building’s columns had been brought there from older monuments and buildings.  Thus we were introduced to one of our favorite oddities about Istanbul – its habit of “recycling” from the past, its own and others’. 

After leaving Haghia Sophia we visited the Basilica Cistern nearby – a huge underground reservoir also constructed in the time of Justinian.  Its vaulted brick roof is held up by more than 300 stone columns, most similarly taken from other sites.  In the shadows at the far end are two columns that rest on massive carved Medusa heads, brought there from who knows what Hellenistic building.

We moved on from there past Sultanahmet Square, a broad rather dusty park standing between Haghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, built in the 17^th century for Sultan Ahmet I, as a modern answer to the older building.  It was constructed on the site of the Byzantine Great Palace, home to centuries of Roman emperors. Deciding to leave that for another day, we crossed to a long park to its north, standing on the site of the Hippodrome, the stadium that had been a focus of public life in the Byzantine capital for a thousand years.  Today all that remains is a line of monuments – ironically, all brought here from parts of the Empire.  There is a large obelisk that had stood near Luxor in Eqypt since 1500 BC until Constantine brought it to his new capital.  Near it is what remains of a 5^th century BC bronze column shipped here from Delphi.  At the far end of the race track there once stood a triumphal arch topped by four massive bronze horses brought from ancient Greece – but the Venetians took them when they looted Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.  (There they stood overlooking St. Marks Square until they were looted in turn by Napoleon in the 18^th century, though they were eventually returned – to Venice.  I’d hate to be a lawyer trying to work out who rightfully owns them!)

Only remaining portion of Great Palace

We wandered past the open squares into a neighborhood of densely-built wood-frame houses and small hotels, eventually crossing an area once bounded by powerful stone walls where one can see the only surviving ruins of the Byzantine Great Palace.

Coming to the Sea of Marmara, we followed the coast back to the Golden Horn, sharing our enjoyment of the late afternoon with many city residents who were spending their Sunday afternoon on the water, fishing and picnicking and sunning themselves on the rocks.  An unending stream of freighters passed on their way to the Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait or back into the Mediterannean.

Topkapi, Second Courtyard

Monday morning we returned to the Old City to visit its second major sight – Topkapi Palace, home of the Sultans ruling the Ottoman Empire from the 15^th century until they departed for more modern quarters in the mid-19^th century.  It is made up of a large complex of open courtyards, built over the original settlements on high ground overlooking the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, impregnable behind stone walls.  The courtyards move from grand ceremonial spaces to increasingly intimate ones, where only the Sultan and a few others were allowed.

Taken as a whole, Topkapi is every bit as impressive as Versailles – both were intended to convey the enormous power of their chief resident – and is ornately decorated throughout.  There was plenty of gold and jewels on display in the Treasury, though a little of that sort of thing goes a long way with us.  (The loot included the fancy dagger that inspired the 1964 heist movie Topkapi.)   More impressive in its way was an exhibit of sacred Islamic relics, many taken from Egypt and Arabia when the Ottomans conquered them in the 16^th century.  The rooms were filled with the sound of a voice chanting in Arabic, and as we left we saw a turbaned imam sitting before a microphone, where someone reads aloud from the Quran, as has been done round the clock since the 16^th century.  The Quran rests on a gold chest containing a mantle worn by the Prophet Mohammed himself.

Entrance to the Harem

A visit to the Harem, or the residence of the Sultan’s household, cost an extra admission charge but was well worth it.  Far from the orgiastic sex-pad of European imaginings, the Harem is a complex network of corridors and apartments that organized the lives of everyone who lived there – the Sultan, his mother, his up to four official wives, many concubines, their children and the female slaves and male eunuchs that served them all.  Yes, I did say that the Sultan’s mother, known as the Valida Sultana, lived there – in fact, she was in charge of running the whole household.   Her large courtyard stands at the center of the Harem complex and her apartment is strategically located between that of the Sultan and those of his wives and favorites – which were most often selected by the Valida Sultana or the head wife.

View up the Bosphorus from Topkapi

The fourth courtyard is a series of gardens containing exquisite pavilions where the Sultan entertained and enjoyed the views.  Today, visitors are also able to take in the views from a spectacular terrace occupied by the Konyali Restaurant.  Although a bit expensive by Istanbul (not Swiss) standards, it was definitely worth it for the chance to take in the Bosphorus views and sea breeze. 

Haghia Eirene

Afterward we passed back through the successive courtyards, back through the First Courtyard which once was the site of much of the Empire’s government.  It also contains the 6^th c. Byzantine church of Haghia Eirene (Divine Peace), a smaller sister of the Haghia Sophia, that stands on the oldest site of Christian worship in Istanbul.  The Ottomans used it as an arsenal instead of converting it into a mosque. Unfortunately, it is not now generally open to the public.

Skirting the Haghia Sophia complex, we decided it was time to pay a visit to a functioning mosque.  The great Blue Mosque, built in the 17^th century, sits across Sultanahmet Square from Haghia Sophia.  Unlike the much older building, it was designed to be as impressive outside as inside; the cascade of domes rising from the western courtyard is particularly striking.

I had done my homework and carried with me a scarf and a pair of socklets – the scarf because I knew women would be asked to cover their heads, and the socks because everyone would be asked to remove their shoes.  Although I have negative feelings about the expectation in Islamic tradition that women cover up in any public space, I feel that one should respect a religion’s customs when visiting its place of worship.   The Spouse and I entered by a door reserved for visitors, removing our shoes and putting them in a bag, and entered into the huge hushed open prayer hall.

The Mosque gets its name from the predominance of blue Iznik tiles throughout.  We stood behind a wooden rail – most of the vast open space was reserved for Muslim worshipers, many of whom knelt on the carpet to say prayers.  I should say, for male Muslim worshipers, because female Muslims are relegated to worshipping in a small enclosed area behind the visitors’ area. 

 Neither TS nor I are shoppers by nature, so we paid a brief visit to the famous Grand Bazaar, a huge maze of covered lanes housing thousands of shops offering traditional wares.  We passed through a part at the end of the business day, when shopkeepers were more intent on packing up than in getting us to stop with one of their ubiquitous hook-phrases, such as “Hey, American!  Where you from?”  Whatever the answer might be, the person would have a cousin who lived there – somehow this is supposed to gain our trust.  We gradually made our way through narrow crowded streets and back to the New District.

Mosaic of the Dormition of Virgin Mary

The next morning, we took a taxi (remarkably inexpensive, we found) to the Church of St Savior in Chora, on the outskirts of the old city (“in Chora” means “in the fields”).  We headed out there because we had heard that the church had fine Byzantine mosaics and frescoes and we were not disappointed.  In fact, our visit was one of the high points of our trip.  It dates from the 11^th century, with mosaics from the 14^th century, full of eccentric spiritual vision of the Orthodox tradition.  Many images related to the Virgin Mary, and we learned that she is a particularly potent and popular figure in Orthodox tradition because of a long history of mother goddesses in the Mediterranean area.  One of two passages outside the nave contained lives of Christ on one side and of Mary on the other, many of the scenes based on the apocryphal 2^nd century Gospel of St James.

We happily spent the morning wandering back and forth throughout the church, identifying Biblical references and taking breaks under the trees in the lovely outside garden – which also enabled us to get better acquainted with some of the city’s friendly cats.  (See accompanying guest blog by The Spouse.)

Afterward we skirted some of the remaining city walls, originally constructed in the 5^th century by Emperor Theodosius II, that stretch 4 miles from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara.  Beyond them we found a newly-constructed stop for Istanbul’s modern tram network, and rode it back into the Old City.  We had one remaining major goal – a thorough visit to the Archaeological Museum, which has one of the world’s richest collections of classical objects.  Both of us, but especially TS, are fascinated by ancient history and archeology.

We enjoyed many of the highlights, such as an amazing carved marble Sarcophagus from the 4^th century depicting Alexander the Great in battle with the Persians.  But our favorite was a hall filled with funerary monuments put up by ordinary people – the inscriptions were so full of the feeling of real life.  We strolled across the courtyard to the exquisite Tiled Kiosk, a pavilion containing beautiful examples of this characteristically Turkish art form.

During the next few days, The Spouse tended to business – a conference at one of the city’s universities – while I took more time to explore the neighborhood and shop for Christmas gifts.  Having been warned that wares at the Grand Bazaar were likely to be of poor quality, I decided to do most of my shopping in the New District, where I it seems that most locals shopped themselves.  (Ironically, bargaining seems to have become mainly a diversion for tourists – residents prefer standard pricing policies.)

One day I walked to Taksim Square, at the end of Ĭstiklâl Cadessi.  In the center there is a monument to Atatürk and the Revolution – notable because it is one of Istanbul’s few representational monuments.  At the far end stands a huge Atatürk Cultural Center, said to house a rich variety of concerts and performances – but when I got close I realized that it was completely closed, though no explanation was given.   Ĭstiklâl runs along the crest of a hill that falls away quickly toward the Bosphorus, and one evening TS and I explored the neighborhoods lining the steep hillsides – most filled with prosperous-looking apartment buildings.

Simit Salesman, Asian Istanbul in background

Our last full day in Istanbul was a Saturday, and we decided to take a ferry to the Princes Islands, a chain of four islands south of the city in the Sea of Marmara.  It was a beautiful day and long before its scheduled departure all seats were filled with ordinary residents and a smattering of tourists like ourselves.  Groups of teenagers, some girls in scarves, some not, and couples out together for the day chattered happily around us, while hawkers offered everything from the popular Simit – like large sweetish pretzels dipped in sesame or poppy seeds – to fruit drinks and sodas. 

The Princes Islands are so-called because in Byzantine times deposed rulers and other undesirables were exiled there; in the nineteenth century they became popular resorts for Istanbul’s Greek, Jewish and Armenian communities.  There are still several Greek Orthodox monasteries, especially on the fourth and largest island Büyükada, where we eventually disembarked.  None of the islands allow automobiles, so many visitors take horse-drawn carriages.  We preferred to walk, enjoying the beautiful homes and ocean views – somehow reminiscent of Southern California.  Like much of the Mediterranean, the climate is actually quite dry, so the natural landscape is semi-arid.

We hiked to the far side of the island, where the Greek Orthodox monastery and church is something of a pilgrimage site.  People praying for the recovery of a loved one could be seen unspooling thread as they walked the cobblestone path, and at the top branches of trees were filled with ribbons symbolizing a prayer request.  Here, there were no headscarves, so presumably the pilgrims were Christians.

At the top there was also a lovely simple restaurant offering good grilled fare and some of the most beautiful views anywhere.



We left, full of impressions but no fixed opinion, vowing to return to Turkey.  It will be fascinating from now on to observe how it manages to negotiate the tensions between modernity and tradition, secular progress and religious faith.