Reminiscing V: Ancient Christianity

İstanbul is known world-wide for its gorgeous sites, which is why the historic centre was made a Unesco World Heritage site, but my jaw didn't really hit the marble floor until we walked into the Aya Sofya.   The 6th-century church, turned mosque, converted to museum, is the city’s most famous monument, and, in the words of one of my atheist friends "is as close to a spiritual experience as I'll ever get." 

The emperor Justinian built this church in 537 AD to remind people of the greatness of the Roman empire, and boy did he get it right.  Even in his day, when only the wealthy dispatched letters that could take months to reach their destination, the Aya Sofya was known far and wide as the most outstanding church in Christendom.  Then in 1453 sultan Mehmed laid siege to Constantinople, driven by desire to convert the city to Islam, and took the Aya Sofya, turning it into a mosque for the next 400 years.  In 1935, Atatürk (whose secular reforms abolished the religious government), transformed the building into a museum. The carpets were removed and the marble floor decorations such as the Omphalion appeared for the first time in centuries, and white plaster was taken off some of the walls, revealing ancient mosaics.

It's difficult to describe the sheer size of the building, as I've never before seen a religious temple of quite this scale, and inside these massive walls and domes every square inch is decorated with ornate, colorful paintings, gold, or carvings.  Surely, Justinian would have approved of the electric lighting fixtures installed in the 20th century that unassumingly hover 15 feet over the floor like clouds of light.  In his time, when being born ugly was something that couldn't be remedied by cosmetic surgery & waxing (seriously folks, google him!), at least he could make up for it by constructing a legend that continues to amaze people by its magnificent beauty.

The Aya Sofya keeps good company with the Chora Church, which stands just outside the original boundaries of Constantinople.    Like Sofya, this church was built by Justinian, converted to Islam in the 15th century, then reclaimed as a museum in the mid-20th.  However, Chora has more byzantine influence, since it was badly destroyed in a 12th-century earth quake (that somehow missed the historic centre of Istanbul, not far away) and was rebuilt and lavishly redecorated afterwards.  Today you can still see this beautiful artwork, which is something of a minor miracle considering that Islam forbids iconic images (explaining why all the mosaics in churches were covered up).  But the fact that they were only covered, rather than destroyed shows the respect that the conquering peoples had for fine craftsmanship.

 

Chora was the church in which the royalty of the day went to worship, and it is decorated in the splendor to which the royals were accustomed.  The richness of the themes and the imagery surrounds you as you walk in and I found myself swept away by the atmosphere of decadence that was so prevalent in the golden age of Byzantium.  

The saints and angels high up on the walls and ceiling must have been a constant reminder to the worshipers of the presence of the divine all around, and that people cannot hide from their choices in life.  One has to wonder if the Islamic conquerors in the 15th-century somehow took this to heart when they covered the walls and ushered in a new religion and a new way of understanding the world.

Reminiscing Part IV: Istan-bully-bully!

"Bully-bully" is an appropriate way to describe this city, it's one of the best places on earth.  Period.  No 'ifs', no 'buts.'  Everyone should visit at least once in their lives, and here's your incentive, dead reader.

The first three days of running through the city, just to try to see all the tourist pulls leaves one gasping for time to write it all down.  At the end of the 3rd day I was in shreds and put my foot down.  On the steps of the Turkish bath.  There’s nothin’ like good long soak and a meeting with a big woman armed with a loofa to make one feel human again.  I glided out of that bath and didn’t even mind the street kids outside under our hotel veranda who were screaming and running around like miniature tasmanian devils.
Leaving my room windows wide open is another quirk that I have when traveling through dynamic cities that are known for their energy.  If you must sleep, it allows the party outside to continue around you, so you don’t wake up wondering what you missed. That lesson was learned several years ago on a trip to Morocco where (believe it or not) the only available hotel was above the spice market, and there was noise and general hubbub from the time we went to sleep at 1am to the time we woke up. But that’s another story for another time.

 No matter what time of year it is there is always something going on in the former Constantinople.  Especially in the summer, there will always be a sea of tourists, but the Turks are so friendly that nobody really gets in each other’s way, and you don’t get the sense that the hundred thousand of out-of-town visitors are a complete nuisance.  Also, there are places like Beyoğlu, up some steep hills where tour buses fear to tread, leaving it open to the locals and the more adventurous.
This is the place to come to really see Istanbul.  Back in the early Victorian days it was the ‘little Europe’ section of town, and all the diplomats and celebrities built their town homes here amidst the numerous bars, patisseries, restaurants, boutiques and embassies.  With this kind of attention, it’s no wonder that it also sported telephones, electric lighting and one of the first electric trams in the world, the Tünel.  But when Ataturk moved the capital to Ankara, Beyoğlu fell into disrepair and took on a decidedly sleazy air.  Recovery took a long time, and it wasn’t until the 1990’s that people started to renovate the neighborhood, bringing it back to a reminder of it’s glory days.  This hill is, once again, the hub of everything chic in town, and we unintentionally dropped in on the night of the big jazz festival, so the cafes and streets were packed. There is no better way to mingle with well-dressed locals!

 Some of the highlights of the city that will be covered in subsequent entries will be the Aya Sofia, and other churches known for their stunningness, some of the most famous mosques, palaces & ruined castles along the Bosphorous and possibly a special section on the harems. 


To come full-circle, lets close with with a quote from Alphonse de Lamartine “If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.”