I visited Istanbul with Mum and Dad in January of this year. Istanbul is a huge city (the population exceeds 11 million) and there is a lot to see. But "old Istanbul", which extends over a peninsula into the Bosphorus, is a good starting point for tourists. Two of the most important locations are Agia Sophia (known to the Turkish as Ayasofya) and Topkapi Palace. They are actually located right next to each other, save for a narrow laneway running between the two. We stayed at the
Ayasofya Pension, which is on that laneway. It is an amazing location. I had a corner room in the original hotel building. Each morning I opened my curtains and was greeted by Agia Sophia's dome immediately before me. Being right next to the basilica, there was literally nothing obstructing the view. Postcard-pretty and picture-perfect are understatements.
Late on the afternoon we arrived, we visited the
Grand Bazaar. This is the largest covered market in the world, with more than 4000 merchants. And that doesn't include the freelance con artists who prowl the labrynth of 58 streets that make up the marketplace. Nearly everything imaginable is on sale here, but the traditional Turkish goods and handcrafts - rugs, jewellery and leather goods - are overepresented.
Early the following day we visited
Agia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom"), once the patriarchate seat of the Orthodox Church and the world's largest cathedral for more than 1000 years, and still, to this day, an architectural marvel because of its large and heavy dome. Inside, Agia Sophia is truly impressive, perhaps more so because one can better appreciate the scale of the dome. Agia Sophia was converted to a mosque many centuries ago, but became a non-denominational museum under the progressive and secular government of Ataturk. Now the decoration is a mixture of Christian and Islamic iconography. In
From Russia With Love, Bond follows Tatiana Romanova here.
After lunch we visited
Topkapi Palace, once the Istanbul residence of the Ottoman Sultans. The palace is beautiful, yet its collection of jewels and artifacts is equally of interest. The Topkapi Dagger is one such item, beautifully decorated with three large emeralds. The dagger was the subject of the 1964 heist/caper film (one of the first in that genre)
Topkapi, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Peter Ustinov and Dassin's wife Melina Mercouri. Ustinov organises a team to break in to the palace, and steal the dagger. Part of the film was shot on location, however the heist scene itself employs some dramatic license. There is no ceiling skylight, as appears in the film, through which the thief is suspended by a wire to not trigger the palace's alarms. (Thirty years later, a very obvious homage to this scene turned up in Brian De Palma's
Mission: Impossible, even going so far as to recreate some shots).
Topkapi is presently being remade as the sequel to the 1999 Pierce Brosnan film
The Thomas Crown Affair.
The Topkapi Affair will be directed by Paul Verhoeven; shooting commences in January 2008.
Dad began our second full day in Istanbul with a treat. Just near our hotel and Agia Sophia, we entered a small stone building and descended some distance to view the
Basilica Cistern. As soon as we entered, I knew straight away that this location was used in the film
From Russia With Love, through which Bond escapes from the Russian Embassy with the stolen Lekter decoding device. The Basilica Cistern is an incredible Byzantine construction, built during the reign of Justinian I in the 6th century, and amazingly, is one of hundreds of ancient cisterns beneath the modern city of Istanbul. This is the largest cistern, measuring 143 by 65 metres. One follows a modern wooden boardwalk through 336 columns (arranged 12 x 26), each nine metres high. Moving through the cistern, one has a feeling of tranquility and eeriness, in equal measure. Most of the columns are unmarked and simply decorated, but one exception is the
Column of Tears which is quite elaborately decorated. It is not known why this one column is significant, but I feel the design of each tear is not dissimilar to the design of 1001 objects used to superstitiously ward off the evil eye. At the end of the boardwalk are two famous
Medusa heads. They're odd positioning suggests they were not used for decoration, but merely stone blocks appropriated from somewhere else, relocated and reused here.
After a window-shopping sojourn from
Taksim Square down İstiklal Avenue (a famous pedestrianised shopping street), we crossed the Bosphorus on a ferry to visit Maiden's Tower, aka
Kiz Kulesi. This is a small lighthouse and fort located a short distance from the Asian side of the Bosphorus. During the Byzantine empire, Constantinople's wealth was primarily sourced from the taxes collected from ships that wish to pass to or from the Black Sea. A great chain crossed the Bosphorus, from the European side to Kis Kulezi, preventing ships from passing without stopping at this little island to pay the necessary tax. In the 1999 Bond film,
The World Is Not Enough, Kis Kulezi appears as the villain's lair, fully fitted out with an underwater submarine base! Later that evening we stopped by at
Galata Tower to take in the magnificient view.
On our last day in Istanbul, Dad and I visited two important religious sites. Despite the Ottoman Empire and Turkey being an Islamic state, the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church is still located in Istanbul, a legacy of the 1000 year Byzantine empire. In crude terms, the Patriarchate is to Orthodox Christians what the Vatican is to Roman Catholics, although it isn't fair to compare the two beyond their significance. The only location that is open to visitors - most of whom are Greek Orthodox tourists - is the Church of St George, Agios Giorgios. Good luck trying to find a taxi driver to bring you here though... Some taxi drivers, like ours, pretend to not know about the Patriarchate, and it isn't well sign-posted.
The second location we visited that day is
Chora Church. The significance of this Orthodox church is its beautiful frescoes. The church was never converted into a mosque, and for that reason, the frescoes are in excellent condition.
All of my Istanbul photos are on
Flickr, and can be viewed in a
slideshow.
