Over the last three decades that I've been coming to Istanbul on a regular and irregular basis, the city has gone through an enormous, if incremental, evolution. Indeed, when I visited last month I found that it had been transformed it into an optimistic and dynamic metropolis. The cafes are full of educated, forward looking young people. The Istanbul Modern (www.istanbulmodern.org), a wonderful art museum, has opened on the Karakoy waterfront, and the Taksim Square area is now a thriving beehive of culture and commerce. The city looks better than at any other time in my 30 years of loving it.
This year Istanbul, which has been the capital of many empires in its long and historic past, is serving as one of the European Capitals of Culture. On April 19-22, it also will serve as host for ASTA's fourth International Destination Expo (www.asta.org).
For first-time visitors, the center of Istanbul is Sultanahmet, where the history of the city is most densely concentrated. The icon of the neighborhood is Emperor Justinian's Church of the Divine Wisdom or Hagia Sofia. Back in 537, when his builders had completed the Hagia Sophia, Justinian proclaimed: "Solomon I have outdone, thee!" Leave it to a Roman to use an engineering marvel to try and wrestle Jehovah's devotion to Jerusalem to his city, Constantinople. From its inception, Hagia Sophia was designed to supplant Solomon's Temple as the locus of where man and the divine would participate in joint ritualism. The great dome, once covered in four acres of gold leaf, was said by one ancient visitor to appear "suspended from heaven by a golden thread."
While the interior of the great church was stripped of most of its gilding, jewels and mosaics, it still takes your breath away when you enter its hallowed zone. For Greek Orthodox Christians, the church is their lost Vatican, the navel of their faith. Though the Ottoman Turks took it in 1453, it was the Venetian-led Fourth Crusade in 1204 that desecrated Hagia Sofia and brought it down. Until the Holocaust, heir brutal sack of Constantinople was called by historians "the greatest crime in history."
Today Hagia Sophia faces the Blue Mosque, completed in 1616. Throughout Istanbul, the architects who built mosques (including Sinan, who is the acknowledged master) took the idea of the dome from Hagia Sofia and evolved a signature style that gives the city its distinctive dome and spire sprouting skyline today. Just as the Byzantines were masters of the mosaic, the Ottomans mastered the ceramic tile. When Sultan Ahmed I built the Blue Mosque over the ruins of the Byzantine Palace, he covered the interior with glorious Iznik tiles.
Nearby, Topkapi Palace is a 183-acre compound that was home to 24 Ottoman sultans between 1453 and 1850, as well as 4,000 political and military advisors, cooks, musicians, eunuchs and harem girls. One of Istanbul's most popular attractions with two million visitors per year, the palace grounds, with their elaborate kiosks and courts, galleries and harem salons, take at least a few hours to explore. The kaftans, the jeweled thrones and the enthroned jewels of the sultans are all on display, as are several religious relics, including the sword of Mohammed, the staff of Moses, the arm bone of John the Baptist and the swords of the Caliphs.
When ASTA comes to Istanbul, April 19-22, for its International Destination Expo, it will have an elegant dinner in one of the city's most mysterious chambers, the 1,700-year old Binbirdirek Cistern. When you enter this vast and shadowy chamber, supported by a multitude of columns, you can't help but feel as if you've entered the densely populated realm of the city's long past. It should be an unforgettable dinner and ASTA promises it will be a sit down meal, not a buffet.
As you leave this area and walk up past the grounds of the old Hippodrome whose bronze horses, pilfered during the Fourth Crusade, now sit on top of St. Mark's in Venice you'll notice a large, not altogether attractive column. It is Constantine's Column and it's worth mentioning because it was erected at the precise moment that the Roman Empire became a Christian Empire. This it's arguably the most important mile post in Europe. Local legend holds that the original cross of Jesus is buried beneath it.
A few blocks away is the world's largest covered bazaar. The Kapali Carsi, in business since 1461, is an amazing maze of 3,600 shops, crowding around 36 streets, which if lined up end to end would stretch 40 miles. It has police stations, a hospital, a multitude of restaurants and 18 separate gated entrances. Entrance #1 is where you should begin your wandering. Though you'll be tempted by hundreds of shops selling carpets, leather jackets, jewelry, ceramics and antiques, you'll get better prices outside of the bazaar.
If a carpet is on your shopping list, check out Punto of Istanbul (www.puntocarpet.com), a company that's been selling carpets since the 18th century. The carpets are not the cheapest in Istanbul, but you can be assured of their authenticity. Carpets range from about $400 to $10,000.
A smaller, and in my view, more beautiful shopping venue, is the Spice Bazaar, the legendary final stop on the Silk Road that stretched all the way to the Tang Court in Xian, China. Mixed among the ceramics and carpets and souvenirs, you can see and smell the burlap bags of cumin and cloves, nutmeg and mace. The bazaar sits next to the Yeni Cami, or New Mosque in Eminonu on the Bosphorus waterfront in a fascinating neighborhood of peddlers, shopkeepers and sailors. From there you can catch a ferry for a very relaxing ride on the strait.
If you look closely at the old walls of Istanbul, where the plaster's crumbled away, you'll notice a masonry of red brick, field stone and old bits of marble from the churches and palaces of Old Constantinople. And that's the beauty of Istanbul. It has few sharp angles and little in the way of polished steel, but 2,400 years of urban living have made it as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans. For more information, visit www.goturkey.com.
James Ruggia is executive editor covering international destinations. He's also written extensively on Turkey.
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