Hello, my name is César.
If you allow me, I would like to take you into a journey to a very special city. Yes, I say special because it is a city between two continents, Europe and Asia, and also because it has had three different names throughout its history: Byzantium, Constantinople, and its current name...Yes, it is...ISTANBUL!!
Istanbul is a place I have always thought it had something in its atmosphere that made it different to other places. And, though I have never been there, I would say that I know something about some of its iconic landmarks, for everything I’ve seen of it on TV. Oh, yes, I’m one of those few, or many, who have fallen under the spell of Turkish TV films and series, or as they call them there, “dizis”.
As I said before, Istanbul is a city with two “sides”, the European part and the Asian part. They are separated by the Bosphorus Strait, which in fact gives us one of the most beautiful landmarks of the Turkish mega-city. I am describing it to you as a very big place, but contrary to what we could think, Istanbul is not the capital city of Turkey, although it is the most important political, economical, cultural, and so on, center of the country. The capital is Ankara, a city in central Turkey (Anatolian peninsula), which is three times less populated than Istanbul.
Today, I’m going to take you into a journey to one of the two parts, the European part, where most of the best-known monuments are located (maybe in another post I could explain about the Asian part)
Santa Sofia (Hagia Sophia) is a former Orthodox cathedral, then a Catholic cathedral and an Ottoman mosque. Now it is a museum. It is known for its large dome, and its beautiful interiors, with some magnificent mosaics.
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| https://www.pinterest.es/pin/375065475213516093/ |
In this area we find some other mosques, such as the Blue Mosque, one of the great mosques in Istanbul. It is located very near Hagia Sophia, being only separated from each other by a garden. From the Blue Mosque we can highlight its exterior view, with its five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes. Its name derives from the hand-painted blue tiles which adorn its interiors.
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Another important mosque in this same area is Süleymaniye Mosque. It is located on the Third Hill of Istanbul (because Istanbul was built on seven hills, just like Rome). It is named after the famous sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and it was designed to glorify him.
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In the same area, we find the Topkapi Palace. This palace is important because it was the main residence and administrative center for the Ottoman sultans, the governors of Turkey during so many centuries. Currently, it serves as a museum, with hundreds of rooms and chambers. As many of Istanbul monuments, it is recognised as a World Heritage Site.
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Another iconic visit we should not forget is the Grand Bazaar. It is one of the largest and oldest covered markets all over the world. It has at least 60 streets inside it, and over 4000 shops, and tourists visit it in large numbers all the year round, to discover its jewellery, gold shops, spice shops and carpet stores. If you want to go there, it is opened each day, except Sundays and bank holidays, from 9 AM to 7 PM.
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To finish with this first part of the European side of Istanbul, two other places must be, at least, cited: the Valens Aqueduct, a Roman construction, which was the major water providing system of the Roman Constantinople. Byzantines and Ottomans continued maintaining and using it, and today it remains one of the important landmarks of the city; the other site is the Cagaloglu Hamam, the last to be built in the Ottoman Empire. For those of you who do not know, a hamam is a place of public bathing, associated widely with the Islamic world, most of all, with the cultural of the Ottoman Empire(Turkish baths).
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The European part of Istanbul is so full of marvellous architectural monuments and landmarks that it was necessary to divide it in two parts. Now we are going to cross the Galata Bridge to pass to the other section of the European part of the city. This is a bridge that spans the Golden Horn. A particularity about the Galata Bridge is that it has been constructed five times. This can be explained because the first times it was constructed with more fragile materials, to the current bridge, with tougher materials.
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The Golden Horn is a major urban waterway, and the principal inlet of the Bosphorus. It is a natural estuary that connects with the Bosphorus Strait at the point where the strait meets the Sea of Marmara. The Golden Horn separates the two parts I’m describing to you in this entry and the previous one. The part described previously is known as “Old Istanbul”, being the part I’m describing now more like a more modern area.
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| https://turkey.toursoption.com/Landmarks/Golden-Horn-Halic-Pl22/ |
In this modern part, there are a lot of important places to visit. The first is the Galata Tower. It is a medieval stone tower, to the North of the Golden Horn’s junction with the Bosphorus. Its particularity is its cylindrical form, with a cone-capped dome. The tower dominates the skyline of Istanbul and offers a beautiful vista of the historic peninsula of the city and its surroundings, so if you want to see Istanbul from up above, Galata Tower is a must.
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If you are in the mood of walking, surely Istiklal Avenue will interest you. This famous avenue is visited by nearly 3 million people in a single day, and a positive point is that it is pedestrian, so you don’t have to cope with cars, pollution and the danger of suffering an accident. Along his 1.4 kilometres, you can go to boutiques, music stores, book stores, cinemas, art galleries, pubs, nightclubs, restaurants and many other more.
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If you happen to cross all of Istiklal Avenue, you will find our next destination, Taksim Square. Taksim is considered by most people the heart of modern Istanbul, and it holds the Republic Monument (1928), which celebrates the foundation of the modern Turkish state (1923). Maybe you have heard about Taksim not so long ago. Six or seven years ago, there were some protests at Taksim, about a government decision which wanted to build some military barracks in Gezi Park, an urban park next to Taksim Square, which normally is used as a popular venue for protests and demonstration. So, going to Taksim means living a small part of the history of that place.
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As you can see, this part of European Istanbul gives a more modern aspect than Old Istanbul, so there are also less palaces or mosques. However, one of the most beautiful buildings of the city is located in this zone, the Dolmabahçe Palace. Dolmabahçe was the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire in its last century (more or less) of existence. It is located on a bay on the Bosphorus, and before being built, the zone was an imperial garden(Dolma means “filled” and Bahçe means “garden”), and it holds the “record” of being the largest palace in Turkey.
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Maybe I left some of the most beautiful sightings for the end, but it was not done on purpose. The symbol of Istanbul par excellence, and which separates the city, and also the country, in two parts is the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is a narrow and natural strait. It connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and via the Dardanelles, with the Mediterranean Sea. The name has a Greek origin (Bos-meaning ox/cattle, and poros-meaning passage-> passage of cattle), in reference to a mythological story about Io. One of the best-known views of Istanbul is that of ferries, recreational and fishing boats, yachts crossing the waters of the strait.
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And, as people not only cross this impressive waterway by boat (or similar means of transport), here comes the reason why bridges are so important in a city with geographical features as special as this one. The three main bridges which connect the European and Asian sides are:
-The Bosphorus Bridge: It was the first of the three to be built, between 1970 and 1973. It is 1’5 km long, being a suspension bridge whose main material is steel. It is the most famous of the three, and it is particularly remarkable its night view, with the red lights.
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| https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Bosphorus_Bridge.jpg |
-The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge: The second of them to be built, between 1986 and 1988. It is very similar to the first one, in length as well as in its material and the design. It is located to the north of the Bosphorus Bridge, and its name comes from the 15th century Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who conquered Constantinople (the former Istanbul) in 1453.
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-Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge: The last of them to be built (2013-2016), and the northernmost of all. It is a bridge for rail and motor vehicle transit. It is a bit longer, 2 km, and it is described technically as a hybrid cable-stayed, suspension bridge. It is the third tallest bridge in the world and also one of the widest. It is named after another important Sultan, Selim I.
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To finish with the report, I think I left one of, in my opinion, most beautiful monuments of Istanbul. It is the Maiden’s Tower (Kiz Kulesi in Turkish, and Torre de la Doncella in Spanish). It is a tower which is located in a small islet at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus, very near to the Asian side/coast. The name comes, allegedly, from a legend according to which, the daughter of an emperor would be killed by a venomous snake on her 18th birthday, so the emperor decided to place her in this tower, to protect her from snakes. But as the oracle predicted, when they celebrated that birthday, he couldn’t prevent the fact that a snake was hidden in a basket he had brought as gift to his daughter, and the snake bit her. Its night view is particularly beautiful, as you can see in the photo below.
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So, this is my presentation on the European side of Istanbul. Hope you have liked it. I have enjoyed a lot searching for all this information and discovering more about a place from which I only have seen (a lot) on TV, and which I would like to be able to visit one day...
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