Istanbul: the East-meets-West Turkish city that has seen empires rise and fall, and has the historic sites and great food to prove it
- Previously known as Byzantium and Constantinople, Istanbul has throughout its 2,500-year history been a gateway between East and West
- Attractions such as the Hagia Sophia mosque, Grand Bazaar, Topkapı Palace, Basilica Cistern and Galata Tower tell tales of past empires
The Pera Palace, Istanbul’s most dignified and historic hotel, stands in the Beyoğlu district, a tangle of streets and staircases lined with appealingly battered belle époque mansions.
They tumble down steep hillsides overlooking water in three directions, and were part of the expiring Ottoman Empire’s 19th-century flirtation with European institutions and architecture.
When it opened, in 1895, the hotel, the first in the city built to European standards and intended for passengers arriving on the Orient Express train from Paris, was viewed as ultra-modern, and was home to the city’s first lift. But the district as a whole was ahead of its time, served by what was only the world’s second fully underground railway, the Tünel.
Inaugurated in 1875, this subterranean funicular still provides a comfortable ride up and down from the confluence of the narrow estuary of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, the threadlike waterway linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, which connects to the Mediterranean.
On one side of the Bosphorus is Europe and on the other Asia. For once the expression “East meets West” is entirely appropriate.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Turkey was seen by Europeans as intriguingly oriental, but not dangerously so, and Istanbul as engagingly louche.
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This continued even after the end of the Ottomans, the creation of the Turkish republic, in 1923, and its transfer of capital status to more centrally located Ankara.
Notable guests at the Pera Palace included assorted monarchs and dictators, Hollywood stars such as Zsa Zsa Gabor and Greta Garbo, and writers Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie, who wrote Murder on the Orient Express in room 411 in 1934.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk plotted the foundation of the Turkish republic at the Pera Palace, and went on to build a modern, Europeanised, secular state. His room is preserved as a museum.
On stepping out of the hotel, there are plenty of architectural pleasures, and slit-shaped views down narrow streets to the waters below.
Not far downhill, the largely pedestrianised Istiklal Avenue, one of the city’s busiest boulevards and its most famous shopping street, is a favourite for gentle evening strolls, requiring only an ear for the chime of an approaching tram.
It sports a few of the familiar Western brand names that make high streets from Bangkok to Birmingham similar, but these are outnumbered by Turkish alternatives, often proudly proclaiming their foundation in the 19th century.
Narrow arcades of decayed elegance to either side are reminiscent of London’s Mayfair, although now housing bustling bars and restaurants.
Founded by Greeks as Byzantium more than 2,500 years ago, the city was exchanged back and forth with the Persians, and rebuilt in AD330 as New Rome and then Constantinople, becoming the replacement capital of the Roman empire after the fall of Rome itself. Both were built on seven hills.
The Turks, who arrived from Central Asia, captured the city and killed the last Roman emperor in 1453, going on to make it the capital of their vast Ottoman Empire. But its position at the meeting point of Europe and Asia, and on the narrow sea passage connecting assorted civilisations, made it inevitable that whoever was in charge would thrive on trade between West and East, and its population would be of many cultures, all leaving their marks on the city.
On every slope a central dome can be seen amid a huddle of smaller domes, guarded at each corner by minarets whose sharp points prick the skies. But there are Orthodox and Catholic churches, too, and secular monuments also break up the skyline, such as the Galata Tower, built in 1348 by the Genoese as part of fortifications for their community of traders.
The round tower’s pale stone bulk rises with a military blankness until reaching an elegant topping of balustraded windows and a golden spire. The views from a balcony around the top are across a jumble of rooftops to shining seas, showing clearly how the city is segmented by waterways.
Ferries bustle up the estuary of the Golden Horn and between east and west, crossing the paths of large cargo vessels moving ponderously between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
The Topkapı Palace, for nearly 400 years the seat of Ottoman rule, is in the district of Fatih, across the Golden Horn, also known as the Historical Peninsula, reached via the Galata Bridge below.
The Topkapı is a labyrinth of fantastically ornate pavilions, palaces and courtyards with dizzyingly repetitive patterns of tiles around interior domes, and intricate inlays of mother-of-pearl on dark hardwood thrones.
Various halls operate as museums of secular and sacred treasures, but best of all is the warren of rooms around the Paved Courtyard of the Sultan’s Wives and Concubines, reached via The Court of the Head Slave of the Door.
This is a place of marble baths and gilded screens, close to the sultan’s chambers and the main throne room, with the most hallucinatory decor of all. The interior is so kaleidoscopic with red, gold, cream and blue, with floral motifs and Arabic script from carpet to decorated dome, that the eye scarcely knows where to rest.
Nearby is another maze that’s a sight even for those determined to keep their wallets firmly in their pockets. The Grand Bazaar is a network of 60 covered streets and alleys containing more than 4,000 shops and stalls, and has been a centre for commerce since the 15th century.
Its main arteries are broad, with high arched ceilings, prettily painted, but its side turnings’ side turnings have further side turnings, and getting lost before eventually regaining one of the nine exits is part of the pleasure.
There are drinking fountains and cafes if exhaustion sets in, and it is possible to waylay frequently passing waiters who swing trays of tea glasses – with bowls of sugar cubes, and spoons and saucers – serving both those selling and their customers.
One turning has nothing but bags, another is full of spices in bright splashes of colour, and others reveal jewellery, money changers, pashminas, table lamps or carpets.
Pause to consider a carpet or kilim and shopkeepers of ingratiating dignity with alarmingly perfect English will invite you in for tea and a long discussion of the merits of different knotting methods and materials, exchange rates and shipping speeds.
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The Archaeological Museum, near the palace, is the antidote to the Grand Bazaar’s bustle, its displays of painted pottery, sarcophagi and jewellery all evidence of the wax and wane of Greek, Roman, Arab and Turkish control.
Many items are spectacular enough to warrant a visit to Istanbul in their own right: Egyptian relics; a fine Roman copy of a Greek bust of the poet Sappho, shown pensive and heavy-lidded; the Alexander Sarcophagus, several tons of tomb covered in high relief.
This was not Alexander the Great’s own tomb, but reliefs of his battles are carved so deeply into the stone that horses appear to rear out at the viewer, and the limbs and the weapons of the combatants form a tracery of such delicacy that it is astonishing that it has remained intact through 18 centuries.
The district’s Basilica Cistern is a recent addition to the city’s attractions despite having been built by the Emperor Justinian 15 centuries ago.
The cathedral-sized subterranean cavern, once a key part of the city’s water system, supports its roof with 336 columns of assorted dates and styles, marching off in every direction, their feet in the water. This would be spectacular enough by itself, but it now features a light show and rather glib if photogenic contemporary art installations.
The Hagia Sophia, another of Roman Emperor Justinian’s works, offers a more dignified and even more vast interior. Its fortunes down the centuries have mirrored those of the city as a whole; conceived as a church, it became a mosque, then a museum and is now once again a mosque.
Its interior, a giant central dome supported by half domes, is a mixture of the sort of mosaics favoured by Orthodox Christianity, complete with human figures alien to Islam, and Arabic texts.
East meets West in a single building, and it takes time, seated on carpeted floors, shoes off, to take it all in.
And then perhaps it’s time to take a ferry over to Asia, site of the city’s original settlement, but now a quieter corner from which many people commute to the European side to work.
Lined with international restaurants, cafes and boutiques, Bağdat Caddesi, also known as “Fashion Street”, is popular for evening socialising. But there’s also tradition in the form of a 16th century mosque built for a daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, and in Ottoman-era cuisine at Kanaat Lokantası, a workaday restaurant for lunching office workers, serving stuffed peppers, roast chicken and pilaus; custards, rice pudding and real Turkish delight.
But save space for the Pera Palace’s elaborate English afternoon tea, with its mixture of finger sandwiches, rich cakes, and sticky Eastern pastries, taken in self-consciously Ottoman elegance beneath striped arches, fretwork balconies, stained glass and gilt-framed mirrors. East meets West on a plate.
