This is what a plate of baklava at Karaköy Güllüoğlu looks like. Not entirely sure what all we selected--we just pointed at things in their cases--but it was all fantastic and accompanied by some delicious hot tea. (And the whole place smelled like butter, to top it off.)
Next up, we made our way over to the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was designed by Mimar Sinan (one of the most prominent Ottoman architects and civil engineers); finished in 1558; and is the largest mosque in the city. The older, larger mosques were originally created as complexes, which included collections of outbuildings to serve various religious and social purposes; in this particular case, primary/religious/medical schools, a hospital, public baths, and a soup kitchen. We arrived at the mosque during prayer time, so we killed a few minutes by having tea in the lovely, restored restaurant into which the soup kitchen was converted.* And then, the mosque.
This place was so big that I couldn't actually get all four minarets into one shot.
Inside the courtyard.
Detail of minaret.
Under the long row of arches are the fountains for people going in to worship. (Women on this side, men on the other side of the mosque.)
Primary central dome (53 m high).
I loved all the crazy angles and partial domes in there. And the designs on those medallions are insanely intricate.
Next up, we were off to Hagia Sophia (be still my heart!), which you're actually supposed to see when it's nice and sunny outside--the interior is all about the light, I'm told--but of course, it was freezing and rainy and entirely overcast on the day we'd scheduled it. Ah well, we managed somehow.
Fair warning: minor architecture, and major history, nerdery approaching.
The history and impact of this building is truly fascinating. Parts of it actually date to 537, when it was constructed under orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, and served as the seat of the Eastern Orthodox church in Constantinople, except for the period between 1204 and 1261, when it actually became a Roman Catholic cathedral (during which time the city was held by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade). Shockingly, this building--which was the largest cathedral in the world until the one in Seville was constructed in 1520--took just under 6 years to complete, and was even recognized in its day as one of the architectural marvels of the world (primarily due to the size of its dome, which was not exceeded in diameter until the completion of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence in 1436, and later, to the architects' highly accomplished use of pendentives [those round-ish, triangular-ish corner devices that allow architects to create domes over square spaces]). The Byzantines retook the city in 1261, and the cathedral resumed its Eastern Orthodox heritage until 1453, when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul and immediately converted the church into a mosque. The minarets were added over the next hundred years, and the entire building was more-or-less earthquake-proofed, during the 16th century, by none other than the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, who, if you will recall, was responsible for the Suleymaniye Mosque (as well as numerous other buildings and civil engineering projects throughout the Ottoman empire). For nearly the next 500 years, Hagia Sophia served as a mosque, and its round, Byzantine shape and domed construction became the shape for ensuing mosque construction all over the Islamic world (which I find amazing...the design of this Christian church became the thing that one envisions today, when one thinks "mosque"!). In 1935, under the orders of Atatürk--the founder of modern-day democratic and secular Turkey--the mosque was converted into a museum, and it has functioned thusly ever since. Hagia Sophia is said to be one of the world's most outstanding examples of Byzantine architecture, and has borne witness to more history than any of us can possibly fathom. Frankly, I find it remarkable that this building still exists, after so many centuries of conquerors, and fires, and earthquakes, and neglect, and emergency repairs, and pillaging, and conversions, and just the sheer amount of time for which it's been around...but here it is, and we got to go see it.
If you'll recall, here's what the exterior looks like. When it's sunny.
Exterior fountain for Muslim ablutions, dates to 1740.
The Imperial Gate, used only by the Emperor (look at that mosaic overhead!).
Detail of both carvings and mosaics (9th or 10th century) over the Imperial Gate...yowza.
The main hall and dome, in all its glory. (With scaffolding, naturally, as one might assume is always present due to the constant maintenance involved in preserving a 1500-year-old building.)
So it's a bit out of focus, but this is a 9th-century mosaic of the Madonna and child, which you can just barely see inside the half-dome on the farthest wall in the photo above.
The Omphalion--marble inlay in the floor where Byzantine emperors were crowned. Complete with visiting kitteh, who was irritated by all of the tourists getting in his face with cameras, and so crawled under the rope blocking off the Omphalion from the riffraff for a little peace.
Depiction of the Kaaba (in Mecca) in 16th- and 17th-century Iznik tiles.
Ceiling of the upper gallery.
Crazy-ornate column capital. From all the information I can find, these are original (as in, 6th century!) and contain the imperial monograms of Justinian and his wife Theodora.
Judgment Day mosaic (12th C.) with Jesus seated between Mary and John the Baptist.
Detail in the folds of John the Baptist's cloak. These mosaic pieces are TINY.
Viking graffiti! (They think.)
Twelfth-century mosaic of the Virgin enthroned, with the later additions of an Emperor and his Empress on either side of her.
Fanciest exit I've ever seen. (No, seriously, look at the painting on the ceiling. Unbelievable.)
Next, we had intended to go visit Chora Church--a Byzantine church absolutely loaded with 14th-century mosaics--but we sorta ran out of time and didn't make it before it closed. Sigh. So instead we poked around the double line of the city walls for a bit, since they were just outside the metro stop nearest the church. The walls date mostly to the 5th century, and still extend across the entire peninsula (Istanbul was well defended!), but have some portions that have been significantly (and controversially) restored. This particular area had a lovely park in front, but also a super sketchy tent city hidden within, and the longer we stayed there, the more people I noticed quietly perched in various places on top of, and between, the walls. Creepy. We made our way back into the center of town rather quickly, after that discovery.
Back in town, we ducked into a quiet, and lovely, little courtyard, and found this shop, whose lanterns were incredible. The super nice salesman told us about a nargileh cafe just around the corner, and when we went to check it out, found this amazing place full of traditional furniture and textiles and tiles, and loads of people sitting around in this set of rather dim, hazy rooms, drinking tea, chatting quietly, and smoking their shishas, with the staff bustling around us with trays of tea and shisha coals. The place was outstanding, and apparently something of a secret...we actually got asked how we'd heard about it.**
For dinner on day three, it was cold outside, and we may have already had a tremendous plate of meze and fresh fruit that our hotel had prepared (amazing hummus and ezme, some sort of fantastic sour yogurt/mint/garlic dip, and some awesome dolma were the highlights), and I was a bit tired, so we opted for some nearby fast-ish food at Sultanahmet Köftecisi (the second word of which, I like to imagine, translates to "meatballery"). Mike went for a plate of Turkish meatballs (köfte) in a spicy red sauce, which came with a side of amazingly tasty rice and a basket of the same fresh, awesomely crusty bread that we ate everywhere, and ayran to drink; and I opted for a nice warming bowl of lentil soup (yummmm). We split an order of kemalpaşa for dessert, and I can only really describe them as donut holes soaked in sugar water until they're squishy.*** (Not my favorite dessert of the trip, but I figured we'd give them a shot.) On the walk back to the hotel, we swung through the Hippodrome area on the side of the Blue Mosque. The Hippodrome was originally a chariot race track dating to Byzantine times, which Constantine enlarged and renovated and made the social center of the city in the early 4th century. The original track is presumed to be roughly 6 feet below the modern-day surface, which still contains three rather fascinating monuments.
In the foreground is the Thutmose III obelisk (which [unbelievably] dates to 1500 BC and was originally at Karnak!); at far right is the walled obelisk (which dates back to at least the 10th century, but might be older--no one really knows!); and--just barely visible here, the small spirally thing to the left of the base of the walled obelisk--the serpent column (which was part of the base of a gold cauldron cast by the victorious Greeks after the Persian wars in the 5th century BC!). In order to demonstrate the grandeur of their capital city, Constantine and ensuing emperors liked to bring in artifacts from all over the empire, and that's how all of this ended up here, as well as how much of the marble and art ended up in Hagia Sophia, which is a mere two minutes from here. That's a crazy amount of history in a very small amount of space, folks.
Day four, thankfully, was bright and sunny. I may have overslept a teensy bit, but we still had time to grab a quick breakfast of fresh-squoze pomegranate juice and a grilled salami sandwich, fit in a visit to Topkapı palace--the primary residence and administrative base for Ottoman sultans until 1856--and to see the Great Place Mosaic Museum before we hit the airport for our flight home. In retrospect, I realize that we saw about half of what we ideally would have like to have seen at the palace, but we also got to take a fascinating little tour with a super nice and interesting guy named Cem (which sounded like "Jim," to my American ears).
And we got to see this kitteh lounging around on the carpets for sale on the sidewalk.
Detail of the Sultan Ahmet III fountain (1728) just outside the palace walls. Original construction began on the palace itself in 1460, and each sultan added to, renovated, and/or rebuilt portions of the palace for himself, his family, and his harem and attendants.
The Gate of Salutation, leading from the first courtyard into the second. The left tower served as a welcome center for visiting dignitaries, while the right was a detention center for wrong-doers. (Go figure.) This thing was built sometime between 1428 and 1542...probably.
Entrance to the Imperial Council rooms.
The Imperial Council rooms. Scribes would sit in the room in the foreground to record notes, and the council would meet in the room behind, separated from the scribes by a curtain that ran along the beam in the center. The sultan would sit in a separate room, behind a window (which you can just barely see here, behind the beam) in the wall of the council room, both to serve as a reminder of the sultan's status, and to allow him to remain impartial while hearing arguments and gathering information from his counselors.
These shields were everywhere, and the script is the seal of whichever sultan placed this here.
Iznik tiles in the harem (which functioned more as an academy for girls intended to marry the sultan and various high-status members of society, and less as the sultan's collection of women, than one might think...although there were certainly elements of that, as well). I was utterly fascinated by the tiles everywhere and took way, way too many photos of them. (And then we found out that parts of the palace had burned in 1665-1666, right around the same time as the great fire in London, and that all these tiles were made with methods and dyes inferior to those of the original tiles that had been here. Sigh. Just think of how many photos I would have taken, had those originals still been around.)
...Like these, for example. They're clearly lacking that typical green-blue-all-over hue, but that's what distinguishes them from the post-fire tiles. (These are some of the originals. Cem was very proud to point them out.)
Cypress and tulip tiles. The cypress represents the monotheism of Islam, and the tulip is shaped like the Arabic word for Allah, so you see these two symbols everywhere. (Or at least, you do after your tour guide has pointed them out and explained them. Then you notice them everywhere.) (And also, the first courtyard of the palace is full of actual cypress trees. It's quite stately.)
More tiles in the harem. Loved the colors and variations in pattern!
The wood carving and mother-of-pearl inlay--especially the Arabic script--was insanely ornate, on these little cabinets set into various walls around the palace. (This one was in one of the sultan's privy chambers.)
Sultan's privy chamber. I apologize for not knowing which sultan, exactly, but I wanted you see that these guys were not messing around with the ornamentation.
Ridiculous tile work and stained glass in the "Gilded Cage"--the chambers for the princes who had not become sultan. Since the title of sultan was not hereditary, the winners had the option of sending their brothers away; killing them; or giving them cushy lives, well within arm's reach (something along the lines of keeping your enemies closer, and all that).
Slightly more expanded view of the Gilded Cage. It's not so bad, I suppose.
In the Courtyard of the Favorites. (The Sultan's favoritest womens, that is. This place overlooked both a pool and a garden, and housed the apartments of the sultan's favorite consort[s] at various times.)
We also visited the Privy Room, which was gloriously tiled and airily vaulted, and was full of relics holy to Islam--among other things, pieces of gutters and the gold cover from the Black Stone at the Kaaba in Mecca; Muhammad's robe/footprints/sword/bow/letters/teeth, and hairs from his beard (most of which are completely protected from the public in their own room, into which one can only peer from the doorway); Moses' staff; Joseph's robe; David's sword; and various articles from Muhammad's daughter Fatima. There's even a mullah in the building who recites verses from the Koran over the loudspeaker 24 hours a day. It's a pretty fascinating place, and probably the only place in Istanbul that's actually relatively quiet, and also: sorry, no photos. (I get that. It's why I always ask if I'm allowed to take photos in churches that aren't specifically marked "no photos." And sometimes just don't take any on principle.) We also wandered through the Treasury, wherein are contained--among many other marvelous and jaw-dropping items, most notably gigantic gem-encrusted thrones--the Topkapı dagger (yep, those are gigantic emeralds in the hilt) and the world's fifth-largest diamond. Sorry, though...also no photos allowed. And with that, we had to conclude our palace tour, having missed the armory, the 3rd and 4th courtyards, and the palace's ridiculous view of the Bosphorus. (It's all on the list for next time, which there will be. Like I said, still a bit obsessed with the place.)
We did have time, however, to take a quick jaunt through the Great Palace Mosaic Museum, which is not big, but is amazing. In a nutshell, when Constantine set up his 4th-century capitol in Istanbul, he built a gigantic palace complex on the hill where the Blue Mosque now stands. Nothing of it remains aboveground; however, in the 1930s/1950s, excavators from the UK discovered portions of the palace's insanely elaborate mosaic floor, and further excavations were carried out in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, it is presumed that only about one-seventieth of the floor has been excavated--and is, perhaps, all that has survived. More fun facts: the average length of one glass piece in the floor is about 5 mm, and there are about 40,000 pieces per square meter of the floor, which means they calculate that the original mosaic may have had somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 million pieces.
The museum consisted of two large-ish rooms with mosaics on the floor and pieces on the walls.
Here you can get a feeling for just how big the surviving parts are, to say nothing of how large one might imagine the entire intact original space might have been. Sheesh.
Trees, animals, a few people, seriously ornate border. (No religious themes here, though.)
Face detail from a section of border.
Obviously, I was really taken with the border pieces...but look at the complexity in the face! And the shading in the ribbon at the bottom! So amazing.
And now, I have to move on, or I will dwell on that place quite possibly forever. Our next big party after Istanbul was New Year's Eve...and we ended up hosting it at our house, and inviting over 10 people to join us. Well. It was big and loud and a touch chaotic, but the food was outrageously good, and the company even better. We started with a massive salad as our friend Jeroen put together some coquille St.-Jacques (a creamy, lemony soup full of scallops and mushrooms--neither of which I like, but somehow I really liked that soup! and he served it on actual scallop shells!); then we had Steve and Nathalie's Thai soup with coconut milk, spicy peppers, lemongrass, and shrimp; then moved on to an authentic, straight-from-Italy-that-day lasagna cooked by Nilla's mother; then Martin and Susanne served up some outrageous veal cheek in a red wine sauce with gnocchi and pumpkin; and we finished off the night with some homemade tiramisu (also courtesy of Nilla and Brad). After dinner, we made a mad dash down to the lake to see the fireworks, which--who knew!--you can see perfectly from our side of the lake, and it's hardly crowded at all. (Of course, we set off our own fireworks, as well, and as our friend Bjorn said, "We won our side of the lake." We are not a group to spare expense when there are fireworks to be purchased, and our fireworks ruled.)
Here's the whole gang around the table.
One of the few fireworks shots of mine that actually was in focus. You can see the actual barges they're shooting the fireworks from. (Loved that.)
I just really liked the greenness of this one.
Brad and Nilla's daughter drew this photo of Ned in about 5 minutes. I think it's outstanding.
And with that, people, I'm going to conclude this post, as it just seems to keep growing and growing like my fat cat Stewie. Next up, some local adventures, and the good stuff we've been reading/watching/eating.
*Did I mention that the Turks drink plain black tea anytime, anywhere, and pretty much always? They serve their tea on a saucer, in these lovely little hourglass/tulip-shaped glasses which have no handle, and so you hold them by the rim so as not to burn your fingers. I found it fascinating (and, thankfully, easy to remember) that the Turkish word for tea is çay--which is pronounced "chai." And along those same lines, that the Turkish word for cheese is peynir, and in Indian restaurants it's paneer; and Turkish meatballs are köfte, and Indian kofta. Just interesting, is all. At least there were a few food words I could remember.
**We ended up going back to the shop to thank the guy for the cafe recommendation, and Mike decided we needed to bring home a nargileh of our own. It's green, brass, very pretty, rather tall, and sitting in our front window now. (And now, a plug for the very nice guy at the shop: if you're in Istanbul and are looking for souvenirs, we had such a nice experience buying our shisha at Ali Textile, Yeniçeriler Caddesi No. 32/4, in the Çorlulu Ali Paşa Medrese.)
Look how pretty and green and fancy-handled our shisha is.
***Wikipedia says that's more-or-less what they are...heh.
****And also, a few other items I'd like to note here, which didn't really fit anywhere else. First, we had excellent, friendly service just about everywhere we ate, even in the kebab shop where they spoke very little English. Also, it was so nice to be in a city where things were open late and people stayed out late and were still enjoying themselves in a large part of town (the new town, that is) past 9:00 in the evening. And where there were so many restaurants to choose from, and fresh seafood, and plenty of street food and drink vendors...all things I miss in Switzerland. Oh yeah, and the ancient hans tucked away all over the place, and beautiful/interesting/old architecture of a completely different kind than I'm used to, and the weird salty/sour/spicy drinks, and the availability of baklava quite literally everywhere... Don't tell Italy or Spain, but I may have found a new favorite place in the world.
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