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| TIME TO GLOW: Twilight descends on magical Istanbul |
She’d been hauled on stage by
the compere, a dead-ringer for Kojak with a line of patter as smooth as his
bald head and a radio mic for a lollipop. He couldn’t have been cooler if he’d
stepped outside into the bone-chilling Istanbul night. Snow was the last thing
I’d been expecting, but the city on the Bosphorus wore a light, white coat,
much like the sprinkling of icing-sugar on the Turkish delight, profiteroles,
buns and multi-coloured sticky candies in so many shop windows.
If Catriona learned anything
that evening, it was this: when the belly dancing has finished and the lads
who’d rushed to occupy the front row seats retreat to the back as soon as the
karaoke’s announced, DO NOT sit where they’d just been sitting. This is good
advice for anyone visiting Istanbul who wants to avoid singing one song while
the band plays another, though to deny the audience such a perverse pleasure
would be a shame.
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| BRA-VO: Me and my colleague Mark with belly dancer |
I don’t know why it’s called
belly dancing, because all the action was taking place north and south of the
three double-jointed, long-haired and beautiful Turkish dancers’ midriffs. It
was like watching jellies in an earthquake. First they fluttered their
unfeasibly-long eyelashes, causing a draught that nearly blew out all the
candles on the tables. Then their shoulders and arms joined in, rising and
falling like waves and sending ripples outwards to their long-nailed
fingertips. When the tremors reached their boobs, which were acting
independently of each other in what must have been reinforced bras, I was
reminded of a boxer launching a flurry of left-right jabs and upper-cuts. The
hips came next, and that was when things went right off the Richter scale —
their pelvises couldn’t have shaken more if they’d been digging up the pavement
with a pneumatic drill. Belly dancing is mesmerising, and you can see it in any
of umpteen clubs and restaurants every night.
Earlier, while wandering
through the Grand Bazaar, I was accosted by a one-legged man on crutches who
was selling Turkish flags.
“I’m all right for Turkish
flags, thanks,” I told him, so he showed me a selection of Zippo lighters, then
some gaudy ‘gold’ rings. Seeing he was getting nowhere, he looked around and lowered
his voice.
“I have Viagra,” he whispered.
“Cheerio!” I said, and
scarpered.
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| DELIGHTFUL: Various flavours of Turkish delight and other types of sticky confectionery in the Spice Bazaar |
The Grand Bazaar is a tourist trap in more ways
than one, so go armed with a map before entering this enormous indoor labyrinth
of more than 4,000 shops lining 18 narrow streets or you’ll end up hopelessly,
and in my case happily, lost. And be prepared for a relentless assault on the
senses — the sights, sounds and scents will leave you giddy. If you’re a
skinflint you can easily consume the equivalent of a three-course lunch by
accepting the titbits offered by shopkeepers as you do the rounds, though
Turkish delight for starter, main and dessert will leave you giddy too.
Churchill and Napoleon loved the stuff and got through boxes of it like Ronald Reagan
got through jelly beans, and Picasso pigged out on it to help him concentrate
while painting, which may help explain his questionable grasp of anatomy.
Turkish delight has been
around since the 16th century, but it was confectioner Haci Bekir’s
introduction of beet sugar as a sweetener (honey and molasses had previously
been used) and corn starch instead of flour in the late 18th century that
produced the delicacy we know today. A wide range of confectionery is still
made and sold in Bekir’s original shop, which he opened in 1777 in Istanbul’s
Bahcekapi district. In the early 1800s an English tourist popped in and left
with several boxes of Bekir’s famed jelly cubes, known in Turkey as lokum and
available in flavours including strawberry, lemon, orange, mint and rose, which
she took home and shared with her family and friends. In doing so, she
introduced Turkish delight to western Europe and gave it its name. Bekir’s descendants run the business he established 235 years ago and are the proud owners
of a royal warrant granted in perpetuity to their renowned ancestor — the sultan
was a sucker for sweets and made him Chief Confectioner to the Ottoman Court.
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| BAARGAINS GALORE: Buy souvenirs in the Grand Bazaar |
Built between 1455 and 1461
and rebuilt and repaired several times since following earthquakes, the Grand
Bazaar is the place to go for silk scarves, amber jewellery, kilim rugs, spices
and the ubiquitous Turkish delight. One trader attracting a lot of chuckles,
but no custom, from passing tourists was trying to entice them into his shop
with the promise of “poison for the mother-in-law”. As his window display
consisted of nothing but blades — everything from barber’s razors to secateurs
to machetes — he couldn’t have been expecting many souvenir hunters. I was
tempted to ask if he had any cut-price scissors, but thought better of it.
Don’t be shy about haggling,
as it’s expected — prices in the Grand Bazaar are pitched high and open to
negotiation — but be gracious. With a little bit of good-humoured huffing and
puffing and rolling of the eyes you can expect to get at least a third,
sometimes more, off the original quote. It’s a different story in the less
blingy but no less colourful or noisy nearby Spice Bazaar, where the locals go
to stock their cupboards with everyday aromatic cooking ingredients that
Western visitors find exotic. The Spice Bazaar has its souvenir and jewellery
shops too, but the prices on the labels are what you should pay.
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| VAC AND FORWARD: A cleaner, just visible, vacuums the enormous prayer carpet in the Blue Mosque, below |
I’ve no idea what the
custodians of the Blue Mosque pay the guy who vacuums the carpet that covers
the vast prayer area, but even with overtime it can’t be anywhere near enough.
Next time you moan about doing the housework, spare a thought for the fella who
walks countless kilometres every day behind his hoover. Visitors must remove their
shoes before entering the mosque and carry them in plastic bags provided at the
entrance. This can be a terrible distraction — while most people were wandering
around looking up at the beautifully painted interiors of the main dome and cascading semi-domes, I looked down occasionally, trying to spot toes poking through holes in socks.
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| DOME-INATING: The magnificent cascading domes in the Blue Mosque |
Built between 1609 and 1616 on
the orders of Sultan Ahmet I, the mosque gets its “blue” tag from the 21,000 Iznik
tiles that adorn the walls. On completion it sported six minarets instead of
the usual two or four, and its splendour caused uproar throughout the Muslim
world. It was only when Ahmet sent his architect, Mehmet Aga, to Mecca to add a
seventh minaret to the sacred Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque) that the outrage
over the sultan’s perceived arrogance and sacrilege was assuaged. Ahmet, who
was born in 1590, ascended the throne at the age of 14 as the 14th Ottoman
sultan and ruled for 14 years. He’s buried in a mausoleum on the north side of
the mosque with his second wife Kosem, who was strangled in the harem in
Topkapi Palace, and his sons Sultan Osman II, Sultan Murat IV and Prince
Beyazit, who was murdered by Murat.
If you’re lucky enough to be
in the mosque at the right moment you’ll witness a light show like no other
when the sun pierces the stained glass windows and casts the most amazing
rainbow-hued rays. None of the original Venetian glass remains, but the effect from
the more recent replacement panels is still astounding.
●Blue Mosque open
9am to 6pm every day (closed to non-worshippers during five-times daily
prayers), admission free.
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| SOPHIA, SO GOOD: The Hagia Sophia Museum and, below, looking up at the massive central dome |
Step outside, stroll across Sultanahmet
Square and enter the Hagia Sophia (Church of the Divine Wisdom) and you’re in
for another treat. I’ve searched, and failed miserably, to find a worthy
superlative for this almost 1,500-year-old behemoth of a building that’s
considered the masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. Commissioned by Emperor
Justinian the Great, it was first a cathedral (the biggest in the world for
1,000 years until Seville’s Saint Mary of the Sea, where Christopher Columbus
is buried, was consecrated in 1507), then a mosque and, since 1935, a museum, and
was completed in 532 after five years of construction that involved the labour
of 10,000 men.
The main feature of the Hagia
Sophia, and the main reason visitors keep apologising for bumping into each
other (they should rename it the Hagia So Sorry), is the massive central dome —
the fourth biggest in the world after Saint Paul’s in London, Saint Peter’s in Rome
and the Duomo in Florence — that appears to hover above the nave thanks to the
40 clear glass windows around its base. Equally impressive are the fabulous
mosaics on the walls depicting Christ, the Virgin and Child, saints and sultans,
many of which are so detailed that at first glance they appear to be paintings,
even when viewed up close.
The Hagia Sophia opened as a
museum in 1935, four years after being secularised by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey and its first president who
abolished the caliphate and whose photo is to be seen everywhere, indoors and
out. If any man in recent history epitomised hero worship it was Ataturk, whose
wide-ranging economical, social, educational, cultural and even sartorial reforms
based on western mores were welcomed by the majority, except wearers of the fez,
which he banned in 1925. Civil servants, however, happily
went along with their Panama-wearing chief’s insistence that they don fedoras
or derbies.
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| HERO: Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk |
●Hagia Sophia open
9am to 7pm, except Monday, admission 20 lira (€8.50).
The Basilica Cistern, a couple
of minutes’ walk from the Hagia Sophia and completed in the same year, is the
biggest of several reservoirs beneath Istanbul and featured in the 1963 James
Bond movie From Russia With Love in which 007 (Sean Connery) is sent to the
city to help Soviet consular clerk Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) defect to
the west. It was also a location in the 2009 crime mystery The International,
starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.
The cavernous cistern, which
can hold 100 million litres of water and was fed by a series of tunnels and
aqueducts running 20 kilometres from the Belgrade Forest north of the city, is Istanbul’s
weirdest tourist attraction. It’s not every day you pay to visit a subterranean
water depository, but this is fascinating, not least because of the forest of 336
eight-metre high marble and granite columns with Ionic, Corinthian and Doric
capitals that support the ceiling and were brought from throughout the
Byzantine empire. Amber lighting, classical music and the echoing plink-plonk
of dripping water create a calming atmosphere away from the hustle and bustle
of life above ground, but there’s still fun to be had — for €5 you can dress up as a caliph or a concubine and
have a quirky souvenir photo taken.
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| WET TILL YOU SEE THIS: Some of the 336 columns that support the sixth century Basilica Cistern beneath the city |
●Basilica
Cistern open 9am to 7.30pm every day, admission 10 lira (€4.25).
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| THREE 'WISE' MEN: Me and colleagues Mark and JP dress up and pose for a photo in the Basilica Cistern |
The Hippodrome was the scene of one of the most violent
episodes in Istanbul’s history when, during the week-long Nika Revolt in
January 532 that was sparked by festering resentment at crippling taxes, Justinian’s
royal palace came under siege and half the city —
including the Hagia Sophia — was destroyed
or damaged by fire. Fearing he would be overthrown, the emperor brought the
uprising to a bloody end when he sent his troops and a force of mercenaries
into the Hippodrome where 30,000 Greens supporters had gathered and put them
all to the sword.
Only three ancient monuments remain
of the many that lined the spina. The 20-metre red granite Egyptian Obelisk,
made around 1500BC, stood in Karnak, just outside Luxor, until 357 when the
Emperor Constantine had it removed to Alexandria to celebrate the 20th anniversary
of his rule. In 390 Theodosius I had it brought to Istanbul (then
Constantinople) where it was placed on a five-metre marble pedestal whose four
sides are decorated with scenes depicting Theodosius watching the obelisk’s
erection, viewing a chariot race, preparing to honour the winner with a laurel
wreath and receiving the submission of the Barbarians. The inscriptions in
Latin and Byzantine Greek on the east and west faces of the pedestal’s base use
a lot of fanciful words to say “this column was erected in a month”, though the
Latin cites 30 days while the Greek puts it at 30. On the four sides of the
obelisk itself, which was made for Pharaoh Tutmoses III, are hieroglyphs
celebrating his victory in battle at the Euphrates in 1450BC.
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| DROME MAJOR: The 3,500-year-old Egyptian Obelisk was the major and oldest feature of the Hippodrome |
The five-metre bronze Serpentine
Column which was brought from Delphi in 324 looks like something you’d see in a
modern art gallery, but it dates from 479BC and was made to commemorate the
Greeks who gave the Persians a bloody nose at the Battle of Plataea in the same
year. Two of the heads of the three intertwined serpents are long lost, but one
is on display in the nearby Museums of Archaeology.
Of unknown date, though
probably erected in the fourth century, the 32-metre Column of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus is named after the Byzantine emperor who restored it in 944
when its four faces were covered with bronze relief panels. The panels,
celebrating the victories of the emperor’s grandfather, Basilios I, were looted
and melted down to make coins in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade when the
Venetians sacked the city. Unlike the single-piece and glass-smooth Egyptian
Obelisk, this column is made of 300,000 roughly-hewn limestone blocks around an
iron core, and in its unclad state it was routinely climbed by teenage boys as
a test of their bravery and to show off to young women. Unfortunately, falling
for a girl in those days — sometimes from a great height — invariably resulted
in broken bones as well as broken hearts.
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| ALL OF A TWIST: Remains of the Serpentine Column with Egyptian Obelisk in the background |
Topkapi Palace, built between
1459 and 1465 on the elevated Seraglio Point promontory under the rule of
Mehmet II, was the main residence of the Ottoman sultans until 1853 when Abdul
Mecit I abandoned it in favour of the European-style Dolmabahce
Palace. In 1924, Topkapi opened as a museum and is today
one of the highlights of a visit to Istanbul, not least for the treasures, holy
relics and lavish costumes on display. Curiously, the sleeves on some
regal tunics are two metres long, so the sultans must have been the star
players on the palace basketball team, the Harem Globetrotters.
Rather than a single grand
structure, Topkapi is a somewhat disharmonious ensemble of mainly two-storey buildings,
courtyards, gardens and pavilions filled with birdsong and the sound of
tinkling fountains. As each new sultan ascended the throne he expanded the
palace, and further additions were commissioned to celebrate battle victories and,
no doubt, match-winning slam dunks. As the empire grew, so too did
the palace, especially during the reign of Suleyman (1520 to 1560) who wanted
Topkapi to reflect his increasing power and influence. Despite
the absence of the symmetry seen in so many royal residences it is nevertheless
a masterful mix, and at least three hours should be allowed to make the most of
what will be a memorable visit.
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| TOP ATTRACTION: Topkapi Palace from the Bosphorus |
Foremost among the treasures
on display are the 86-carat Spoonmaker’s Diamond and the Topkapi Dagger. Legend
has it that the former, which is drop-shaped and surrounded by 49 other
diamonds, was found in a 17th century rubbish dump and came into the possession
of a scrap dealer who sold it for three spoons. The 35-centimetre curved
dagger, in a gold sheath studded with precious stones, has three large emeralds
from the Somondoco mines in Colombia on one side of the handle and a diamond
encrusted chain. Sent as a gift by Sultan Mahmut I to the Shah of Persia in
1747, it never reached him — Nadir Shah was assassinated by one of his bodyguards
and it was returned to the palace. The dagger is
the subject of the 1964
heist movie Topkapi starring Peter Ustinov (he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor),
Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley which inspired the long-running
TV series Mission: Impossible.
Relics
on display include a mantle worn by the Prophet Mohammed, hairs from his beard
and a tooth, two of his swords and an impression of his footprint. Visitors can
also see a case containing a hand, arm and pieces of the skull of John the Baptist,
Moses’ rod (the one that turned into a snake, not the one he used for fishing).
●Topkapi Palace Museum open 9am to 7pm, except Monday, admission 20 lira (€8.50) plus 15 lira (€6.35) to visit the harem.
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| HOUSE MUCH? Some of the multi-million dollar riverside homes, called yalis, along the Bosphorus shore |
The Bosphorus, which splits
Istanbul in two and separates Europe from Asia while connecting the Black Sea
and the Sea of Marmara, is one of the busiest waterways in the world and one of
the most difficult to navigate because of the currents and several blind spots.
However, visitors who embark on a sightseeing cruise on any of the scores of public
ferries or private-hire pleasure craft are in the safe hands of skippers and
crew who go up and down here several times a day.
There’s as much to see from
the water as there is on land, plus the thoroughly satisfying bonus of seeing
those appalling bores who never tire of boasting about how much they sold their
houses for being stunned into wide-mouthed silence on learning the asking
prices for many of the waterside properties. Ten million dollars will buy you a
baronial castle with a couple of thousand acres of grouse moor in the Scottish
Highlands; for $20 million you’d get a salmon run plus a team of ghillies and
the right to call yourself a laird thrown in; but some of the wooden-panelled shoreline
homes known as yalis along the Bosphorus are valued at upwards of $50 million,
so unless your surname’s Abramovich, Onassis or Rockefeller you can keep on dreaming.
●Half-day Bosphorus cruises
operate every day, from 70 lira/€30 (children
48 lira/€20). Full-day
tours including lunch/dinner and refreshments also available.
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| SULTANS OF BLING: The fabulous Dolmabahce Palace and, below, the bed in which the revered Ataturk died |
The 285-room Dolmabahce Palace is the star of the show — or rather, the shore — when you go cruising. Built between 1843 and 1856 by Abdul Mecit I when the Ottoman Empire was in decline, it was financed with loans from foreign banks and occupied by six sultans until the establishment of the republic. A mix of oriental and western styles, it contains more than 600 paintings and the world’s biggest Bohemian crystal chandelier, weighing 4.5 tonnes and containing 70 lamps, which was a gift from Britain’s Queen Victoria. The room and the bed in which Ataturk died are preserved exactly as they were, and the hands on the clock have remained fixed at 9.05am, the hour when he drew his last breath at the age of 57 on November 10, 1938.
The palace can only be viewed as part of a
guided tour. Two official tours run throughout the day, one taking in the
Selamlik containing the state rooms and the Ceremonial Hall, and the other the
harem. The first is the best, though there’s nothing to stop you doing both.
●Dolmabahce Palace open 8.30am
to 4.30pm, except Monday and Thursday, admission 10 lira/€4.25 (harem), 15 lira/€6.35 (Selamlik), 20 lira/€8.50 (both).
Other places to visit, depending on your
schedule, are the Archaeology Museums, the Galata Tower for panoramic views, Miniaturk
(a park displaying scale models of famous buildings from Turkey and throughout
the world), the Toy Museum, the Ural Ataman Classical Automobiles Museum and
the Rumeli Fortress Museum where open air concerts are staged in summer.
Mosques, monuments and museums aside, simply
being in Istanbul — wandering the bustling
boulevards, streets and alleyways of this remarkable multi-cultural metropolis
where east meets west and modern meets ancient — is
a sensory experience that almost has the skin tingling with excitement. Granted,
the snow and sleet and biting winds of February had my skin tingling with the
cold and my hands turning as blue as those Iznik tiles, but it was a small
price to pay for the privilege of spending time in the city that 14 million people
call home. If it can get a frozen thumbs-up in the middle of winter, imagine
how much more enjoyable it must be on a warm and sunny summer’s day.
Nothing, though, will ever come
close to the enjoyment of listening to karaoke queen Catriona trying to compete
with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
— even though the sound of it was something quite
atrocious.
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| BRIDGE OF SIZE: One of the two soaring suspension bridges that carry traffic across the Bosphorus |
