Just like song says, İstanbul was Constantinople. But going way back, the Fikirtepe mound on the Anatolian side is from the Copper Age, with artifacts dating to 5500-3500 BC. No one knows what the inhabitants called the place, though.
Then some Thracian tribes founded a port settlement named Lygos, on the European side, on the point just below Topkapı Palace, near Sirkeci train station. That was around 1300-1000 BC.
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Plan your visit with a useful guidebook! |
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Then, getting into more historical times, Kadıköy has remains of a Phoenician port, from the time when it was known as Chalcedon.
The Greeks colonized Byzantion on the European side of the Bosphorus in 667 BC. Byzantion, or Byzantium, became the second city of the Roman Empire, and then when Rome fell (or just faded away), the "Roman Empire" lived on for centuries, ruled from Byzantium. That's why it was called the Byzantine Empire.
The city was renamed Constantinople, after Constantine the Great. He lived 280-337 AD, and was Emperor 306-337. Constantine was the first to refer to the city as "New Rome", and his rule was when the eastern capitol really became the main base of power.
Then, after the Ottoman Turks captured the city in 1453, they started calling it İstanbul. However, that didn't become its official name until 1930! "İstanbul" is based on the Greek for "In the City".
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I built the Hagia Sophia in 532-537 AD. It was the largest Christian church in the world for about 1000 years, until the completion of the Medieval Seville Cathedral in 1520.
It was the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious home of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. It contained a large collection of holy relics and many great works of art. It was also the principal site of Byzantine imperial ceremonies, such as the crowning of a new emperor.
With the conquest of İstanbul by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453, it became one of the largest mosques in the world. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and other overtly Christian furnishings were removed. Many of the fine mosaics were plastered over, rather than being destroyed.
These images are thumbnails, click on one to view a larger version.
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The four large minarets were added during Ottoman times. One is built from red brick, the other three from white marble. The slender marble minaret at the northeast (right rear as seen above) was erected by Sultan Bayezed II (ruled 1481-1512), and the two larger marbles on on the west side (at left as seen above) by Sultan Selim II (ruled 1566-1574).
The interior is a mix of the original Byzantine church and the later Islamic mosque. At right is the semi-dome above the original Christian altar, with a mosaic of Virgin and Child unveiled in 867. Below are views across the floor of the main dome, showing the Christian imagery and the Islamic calligraphy.
The full original name is the Church of the Holy Wisdom of God. In the original Greek it's Ναός τής Αγιας τοϋ Θεοϋ Σοφις, or more simply, Αγια Σοφια or Hagia Sofia.
Hagia Sophia is Greek for Holy Wisdom, so it's not named after a "Saint Sophia" — it's named for "Holy Wisdom". It happened that "Sophia", Greek for "wisdom", because a popular woman's name, including a few women who became designated as saints.
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The interior is made from material from throughout the Byzantine Empire — porphyry from Egypt, green marble from Thessaly, black stone from the Bosphorus region, and yellow stone from Syria. Eight large Corinthian columns were disassembled in Baalbek, now in Lebanon, and shipped to Constantinople for use in its construction.
The interior dome is 31.24 meters in diameter, and its center is 55.6 meters above the main floor.
The famous Deesis, from the early 14 century, is one of the mosaics in the upper levels. There's a replica of it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
During the Fourth Crusade, the military forces from western Europe didn't bother going all the way to Jerusalem before stopping to fight a religious war and desecrate local religious facilities.
During the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Hagia Sophia was ransacked and desecrated — by the western crusaders!
The church itself became a Roman Catholic cathedral during the Latin occupation of Constantinople in 1204-1261. Many of the relics and much of the precious metals and other valuables were taken back to western Europe.
The Deesis was created to mark the time when the Latin crusaders were finally run out of Constantinople. This meant the end of Roman Catholic use of the Hagia Sophia and its return to Orthodox use.
The mosaic was probably completed in 1261, the year of that restoration.
At right is one of the mosaics of Empress Zoe.
Jesus, clad in dark blue (as per the standard custom in Byzantine art) is seated in the middle, giving his blessing with his right hand and holding the Bible in his left hand.
At right is Empress Zoe, and at left, Constantine IX Monomachos.
Zoe went through several husbands, and this mosaic shows signs of heads of previous husbands being scraped off and replaced.
The Sultanahmet Camii, also known as the Blue Mosque, is directly across from the Ayasofya. It's similarly spectacular but much newer, dating from the 1600's.
It was built under the direction of Sultan Ahmet I during 1609-1616. The mosque grounds includes the tomb of its founder, a madrasah, and a hospice.
It was built on the former site of the palace of the Byzantine emperors, facing the Hagia Sophia across a park with fountains and many flower beds. This was a politically symbolic move — replace the palace and home of the Byzantine emperors with a large mosque.
The design is spectacular but unusual, as it has six minarets. Four at the corners of the mosque itself, and two more at the corners of the forecourt. The design was controversial when it was first announced, as only the mosque of the Ka'aba in Mecca had six minarets. Sultan Ahmet's solution was to fund the construction of a seventh minaret in Mecca!
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You cross the outer courtyard, seen at left, and enter through the inner gate, seen at lower left. Then you are in the courtyard of the mosque. An ablution fountain is at its center, and cool shaded stalls are around the perimeter. |
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At right and below, the interior of the Blue Mosque.
The minber is the elevated pulpit, where the imam stands to deliver the sermon at noon prayer on Fridays or on holy days. To its left is the mihrab, the niche indicating the qibla, or the direction to the Ka'aba in Mecca. A fragment of the sacred black stone from the Ka'aba is embedded in the Blue Mosque's mihrab. The Sultanahmet Camii, or Sultan Ahmet's Mosque, is called "The Blue Mosque" because of the blue Iznik ceramic tiles inside. The pictures below show some the interior tile work. |
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The bazaars in İstanbul are pretty fantastic,
you could wander through them for days.
One of the most astounding displays of enthusiastic capitalism in the world — all business, all the time, with almost anything imaginable for sale. Below is the entrance to Kapalı Çarşı, the Grand Bazaar. To the left are two of the main streets inside. There are more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops in the Grand Bazaar, and it has between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. |
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Hans are sheltered courtyards within the bazaar. Caravans would end their trip there. Offices still make them places of sales from the wholesalers to the retailers.
At right is Büyük Safran Han.
Below are two views of Zincirli Han — the passageway to the han, and the han's open courtyard.
According to what we see in the movie From Russia With Love, during the early 1960s the KGB's İstanbul station was located in a room off the balcony in Zincirli Han...
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Uzunçarşı Caddesi
(Longmarket Street)
leads out the back of the Grand Bazaar and down
the hill.
Everything is sold there — manniquins, prayer beads, hookahs, hookah parts, etc. |
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Polonya Pazarı is a partially Slavic bazaar selling all sorts of tools and machine shop supplies. Tools, mechanical parts, electrical parts, and much more. |
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Further down the hill are districts selling
plastic goods, toys, clothing,
ropes, chains, gardening tools, and so on.
Finally, at the bottom of the hill you get to Mısır Çarşısı, or the Egyptian Bazaar, also called the Spice Bazaar. It has fruit, nuts, and, of course, spices. |
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The ferry docks at Eminönü are always busy!
This is where the Golden Horn empties into the Bosphorus. The Sirkeci train station is just one block up from the pier, so this is a very busy transport hub. |
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| The Sun is setting over the Sultanahmet district. We're viewing this from the Kadıköy district on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. The Blue Mosque, or Sultanahmet Camii, is at left. The Ayasofya, or Hagia Sophia, is at middle-right. |
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| This is the view looking in the opposite direction, from a rooftop in the Sultanahmet district looking across the Bosphorus to the Asian side. |
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| And then sitting on the rooftop in the evening, planning the next day. |
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The Basilica Cistern, or in Turkish, Yerebatan Sarnıcı, is an enormous water storage facility built in 532 under the rule of the Emperor Justinian. It's just across the street from the Ayasofya, which he also built. It's surprisingly large — 140x70 meters, with 336 columns.
Water was pumped from a reservoir in the Belgrade Woods, 19 kilometers north of the city near the Black Sea. The water ran through 20 kilometers of aquaducts built under the Emperor Justinian to the center of the city.
The cistern could hold 80,000m3 (that's 80,000,000 liters!) of water, enough to supply the city of Constantinople through a long seige or drought.
It continued to supply water to İstanbul through the Ottoman conquest in 1453 and into modern times. It provided water to the nearby Topkapı Palace until the Sultans moved out.
Contrary to the movie From Russia With Love, the İstanbul station of MI6 does not connect to the cistern, nor is there a periscope into the KGB/FSB office.
And contrary to the movie The International, it isn't under the Sultanahmet Mosque or adjacent to the Süleymaniye Mosque.
But it's still fun to explore.
Soft music plays from hidden speakers. Long raised walkways lead back through the cistern. There's even a coffeeshop down there.
Some 336 marble columns, in 12 rows of 28, support the ceiling and the city above. Each column is 9 meters tall.
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| © Bob Cromwell Sep 2010. Created with /bin/vi and ImageMagick, hosted on OpenBSD with Apache. Root password available here, privacy policy here. |
