Ottoman İstanbul in 10 iconic monuments

Galata Bridge (Photo: Sunday's Zaman)

April 06, 2014, Sunday

From the day in May 1453 when Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror burst through the walls of Constantinople to seize the city from the Byzantines until the day when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared a new republic and moved its capital to Ankara, İstanbul was the heart of the Ottoman Empire, embellished with many magnificent buildings, particularly by the early sultans.
 Even in the later years when the Empire was in terminal decline, Constantinople (İstanbul) remained the cradle for experiments in architecture that eventually came to define the modern city.
These are some of the buildings that will give you an insight into the İstanbul of the Ottomans.


Rumeli Hisarı

Rumeli Hisarı

Why? Base for Sultan Mehmet II's assault on Constantinople

In 1452 the young Sultan Mehmet II determined to wrest the hugely important city of Constantinople from the weakened Byzantine emperors. As part of his preparations, he commissioned a huge new castle at the narrowest point of the Bosporus, opposite the castle built by his great-grandfather in what is now Anadolu Hisarı. Using these two castles the sultan was able to prevent food supplies passing up the strait to the besieged city, thus hastening its collapse.

Restored for the 500th anniversary of Sultan Mehmet II's victory in 1953, the castle now forms a dramatic landmark for Bosporus cruises. You can look round the interior too, although as yet nothing has been done to explain its role in the hugely important events of 1453.

Topkapı Sarayı

Why? Private home of early sultans and base for early Ottoman government

Built over the ruins of the old Byzantine palace on a superb site overlooking the confluence of the Bosporus, Golden Horn and Sea of Marmara, Topkapı Sarayı is the finest -- and most visited -- Ottoman monument in the city, its multiple pavilions, chambers and gardens an unexpected glimpse for most Western visitors of a style of architecture far removed from that of their home countries. Although parts of the complex date back to the reign of Sultan Mehmet II, it was many years before Topkapı became the permanent home of the Ottoman rulers and their families who lived in the famous harem -- really just the private apartments of the imperial family.
But Topkapı Sarayı was also the center of early Ottoman government, with the most important dignitaries gathering in the divan to make their decisions, with the sultans sometimes listening in unseen. Only slowly did the business of administering the Ottoman Empire move into separate premises away from the family home.

İbrahim Paşa Sarayı

Why? Only surviving example of early Ottoman private palace

Now home to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in the Hippodrome, the İbrahim Paşa Sarayı is often overlooked as an important building in its own right. In fact it was built in 1524 for İbrahim Paşa, the grand vizier, son-in-law and favorite of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, and somehow managed to survive his fall from grace and the depredations of the centuries until today it stands as the sole reminder of the grand homes once lived in by the upper echelons of early Ottoman society.
Currently closed for restoration, the palace is home to some of the city's most magnificent carpets as well as to a fine exhibition of ethnography. It should reopen soon.

Kapalı Çarsı

Why? Center of Ottoman commerce for hundreds of years

Touristy it may be now, but Kapalı Çarşı, also known as the Covered or Grand Bazaar, has an illustrious pedigree stretching right back to 1461 and the reign of Sultan Mehmet II. To appreciate that fact you need to look for the solid stone Bedesten, the covered market within a covered market whose mighty gates are still locked every evening. Then imagine how the extra buildings have been added gradually over the years until now there are said to be more than 4,000 shops making up the complex.


Süleymaniye Mosque

Süleymaniye Cami

Why? Masterpiece of greatest Ottoman architect, Mimar Sinan

Unanimously regarded as the greatest of all Ottoman architects, Mimar Sinan (c. 1490-1588) was responsible for around 320 buildings, of which 84 still stand in İstanbul, including 42 mosques. Of these mosques, the most conspicuous on the skyline is Süleymaniye Cami, generally regarded as the finest of his gifts to the city despite strong competition from rivals such as the Şehzade, Rüstem Paşa and Sokollu Mehmet Paşa mosques. In the newly restored Süleymaniye Cami, Mimar Sinan brought to perfection a style of centrally domed building that had formed part of the city's silhouette since the days of the Hagia Sophia.

Süleymaniye Cami is also important as the most complete surviving example of an Ottoman külliye, the complex of social buildings associated with the imperial mosques. Clustered around it you can still see the imaret (soup kitchen), kervansaray (caravanserai), hamam (Turkish bath), hastane (hospital) and multiple medreses (schools) that all once functioned alongside it.


Fine funerary monuments on Cülus Yolu, Eyüp

Eyüp Cami

Why? İstanbul's most holy shrine where Ottoman sultans were confirmed in office

At the far end of the Golden Horn, Eyüp Cami is the most sacred of all İstanbul's holy places, the believed burial place of Eyüp el-Ensarı, standard-bearer and friend of the prophet Muhammad, who had been killed during the Umayyad siege of Constantinople in 668-69. So important was el-Ensarı that it was over his grave that Sultan Mehmet II built his first mosque after capturing the city. Today, nothing remains of that building, the mosque having been completely rebuilt in 1766 after an earthquake.

Throughout the Ottoman era, Eyüp Cami played an important role in the ceremonial attached to the coronation of a new sultan. Once appointed, the sultan would be rowed up the Golden Horn to Eyüp where he would process along the Cülus Yolu (Accession Road) to the mosque where the Sword of Osman would be strapped onto him to confirm him in his new office. The route of the old Cülus Yolu is still marked by some of the city's finest Ottoman buildings.

Nuruosmaniye Cami

Why? First example of a more Westernized style of mosque architecture

Frequently overlooked in the rush to reach the shopping treats of the Kapalı Çarşı, the huge Nuruosmaniye Cami is interesting, according to urban historian Murat Gül, as the first example of a new approach to mosque architecture that utilized Western-style ornamentation rather than the motifs familiar from early Ottoman buildings. Not only that, but it boasts the only horseshoe-shaped courtyard in the city. Lengthy restoration work appears to be nearing completion if you'd like to admire these innovations.

Dolmabahçe Sarayı

Why? Private home of later Ottoman sultans

In time the Ottomans tired of congested Topkapı Palace. At the same time, desperate to revive their declining empire, they had begun to flirt with Western ideas that found their natural home on the other side of the Golden Horn in Galata and Pera --modern Beyoğlu. So when the time came to design a new palace more suited to modern tastes, the decision was made to build it on reclaimed land in what is now Dolmabahçe. The men charged with creating this new palace were Garabet Amira and Nikoğos Balyan, scions of an Armenian family of architects that left as strong a stamp on late Ottoman Constantinople as Mimar Sinan had on the earlier version. The palace they completed in 1856 had 258 rooms, including a Ceremonial Hall with a 38-meter-high ceiling.

Topkapı served the imperial family for centuries but Dolmabahçe speedily fell from favor after an attack on the neighboring Çırağan Palace in 1878 exposed its vulnerability. It continued to be used for state business and it was here that the Republic of Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, died on 10 November 1938. To this day, his bed is draped with a Turkish flag. All the clocks in the palace stand still at the moment of his death.

Yıldız Sarayı

Why? Final home of the Ottoman sultans

In 1878 the sultans made their last move inland and uphill to Yıldız Park where the paranoid Sultan Abdülhamid presided over the creation not so much of a cohesive palace like Dolmabahçe but of a complex of buildings separated from each other by walls and tunnels that make it difficult for modern visitors who need to make two separate trips to see everything. More of the buildings are being restored to be ready to open to the public. Meanwhile the most striking section is the Şale, a long, low building that must surely be one of the grandest guesthouses in the world and was largely built to accommodate Abdülhamid's friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on his visits.

Galata Bridge

Why? First bridge to link old Turkish part of city with new, more Westernized part

Today it's almost impossible to imagine a time when there was no bridge across the Golden Horn linking the historic part of the city with what is now Beyoğlu. Yet that is indeed how matters stood until 1845, even though both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had drawn up tentative plans for a bridge way back in the 16th century. Since then, Galata Bridge has gone through several rebuilds, most recently in 1994. A tram now sweeps majestically over the bridge, completely dispelling the colorful ghosts of the Ottoman past who swarmed across it so vividly in Edmondo de Amicis' travelogue, "Constantinople."

Keywords: ottoman empire , istanbul , iconic monuments

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-343798-ottoman-istanbul-in-10-iconic-monuments.html 

Byzantine İstanbul in 10 iconic monuments

(Photo: Sunday's Zaman)

March 30, 2014, Sunday

Long before it was İstanbul or even Constantinople, the great city that is now Turkey's undisputed cultural capital was Byzantium, the city on the Bosporus founded by Megaran colonists in 637 B.C.

As the Roman Empire became larger and more unwieldy, it was on this eastern city that the eyes of Emperor Constantine alighted in 330. Given his stamp of approval, it was renamed Constantinopolis and went on to become the heart of the Byzantine Empire that evolved out of the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire.

Today traces of the Byzantine era litter Old İstanbul inside the battered old land walls. The most conspicuous and most visited of those traces is, of course, the great church of Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) that bestrides Sultanahmet Square. But with many of the old buildings given new uses (specifically the churches as mosques) and with no museum devoted to the city's Byzantine history, it can be hard for the casual visitor to imagine how things once were. Click on www.byzantium1200.com to find out more about the Byzantine city, then head straight for these great sites to dream of the distant past.

Hagia Sophia Museum (Aysofya Cami)

Why? Finest surviving monument to early Byzantine era

Unmissably large, Hagia Sophia looks as if it must always have been part of the scenery. In fact, the building you see today was the third church on the site and owes its existence to a riot in 532 between the supporters of opposing chariot teams in the nearby Hippodrome that makes the more recent troubles in Gezi Park look like a storm in a teacup. By the time the dust had settled, not just the second Hagia Sophia but also two other Byzantine churches had been burnt down.

The great emperor Justinian moved fast to make good the damage, commissioning Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus to build a replacement so imposing that no one would remember what had gone before. Completed in 537, it boasted the largest dome in the world, which quickly fell victim to an earthquake in 558 and had to be rebuilt. That dome and its sturdy supporting pillars created a great sense of space that is harder to appreciate now that the scaffolding required to “restore” the building has been reinstalled in the nave.

No visitor to Hagia Sophia will be able to forget the glittering mosaics dating from the ninth to the 13th centuries that are dotted about the interior. The church stands mainly, though, as a monument to the grand ambitions of an emperor who left his mark in buildings scattered all over Western Anatolia and Thrace.


Chora Church

Chora Museum (Kariye Cami)

Why? Finest monument to the 13th-century Byzantine Renaissance

Built on a far more petite scale than Hagia Sophia, Chora Church, out near the Land Walls at Edirnekapı, was built in the 11th century when this part of the city was still rural. Expanded in the 13th century, it was given a lavish interior decoration scheme by a wealthy statesman called Theodore Metochites whose preposterous taste in headgear was immortalized in one of its many mosaics.
Today Chora is the best place to come to inspect the evidence of a Byzantine artistic renaissance that took root in the city after the Latins who occupied the city from 1204 to 1261 were finally turfed out. Visit soon since the building is scheduled to close for extensive restoration.

Fethiye Cami

Why? Second only to Chora Church as a place to admire late Byzantine mosaics

Should you be thwarted in your efforts to visit Chora Church, then head east along Draman Caddesi in search of the Fethiye Cami, which started life in the 12th century as the Monastery of the Theotokos Pammakaristos but, like the Chora Church, acquired a lavishly decorated extension in the 13th century. Nothing here can quite match the staggeringly lovely frescoes of the Chora's Parecclesion chapel, but the dome mosaics depicting the Pantocrator and the Virgin Mary are a stunning reminder of the glory that was Byzantium.

Monastery of the Pantocator (Zeyrek Cami)

Why? Burial place of some later Byzantine emperors

High on a bluff above the Golden Horn at Unkapanı, the Byzantine Monastery of the Pantocrator has been under restoration for so many years that most people have probably forgotten what it used to look like. That work looks as if it may finally be nearing its end, which means that visitors will once more be able to appreciate a basically 12th-century monastery that grew in increments to become one of the most important in the city and the burial place of some of the Komneni emperors. The monastery owed allegiance directly to the emperor rather than the patriarch and possessed a famously rich treasury until it was raided by Crusaders in 1204. Some of their booty now forms part of the altarpiece of St Mark's Basilica in Venice.


Küçük Ayasofya Cami

Church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus (Küçük Ayasofya Cami)

Why? Oldest intact Byzantine church in city

It would be easy to assume that Hagia Sophia was the oldest surviving intact church in İstanbul, an honor that actually falls to the much smaller Church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus, on the shore of the Sea of Marmara downhill from the Arasta Bazaar. Built in 527, the interior of the church featured a two-storey octagonal colonnade embellished with wonderful capitals and lengthy inscriptions that mention Sergius but not Bacchus. Some people object to recent restoration work inside what is now a mosque; others will be too stunned by the beauty of the colonnades to complain.

St Mary of the Mongols

Why? The only city church that never became a mosque

On the hilltop near what was once the vast redbrick Greek High School for Boys in Fener, St Mary of the Mongols is worth visiting not because it is the most beautiful of the city's surviving Byzantine churches, but because it was the only one that was never turned into a mosque, courtesy of Atık Sinan, the architect who worked on Fatih Cami for Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror; a copy of the decree permitting its survival hangs on the wall. The church is open on Sundays. At other times ring the doorbell for admission.

Great Palace Mosaics Museum

Why? A glimpse at the glory of the Byzantine Great Palace

While coachloads of tourists descend on beautiful Topkapı Palace it's hard to remember that an even bigger Byzantine palace, or collection of palaces, once stood in what is now Sultanahmet/Cankurtaran. Bits of it crop up whenever new building work is carried out but the single most stunning reminder of what has been lost can be seen in the Great Palace Mosaics Museum, beside the Arasta Bazaar. Not only do the mosaics shown off in situ suggest the lost splendor of the palace building, but they also hint at the way of the life of the Byzantines too with men shown hunting, fishing and farming, while children dressed in the colors of the most revered chariot teams play games.





Yerebatan Sarnıcı

Yerebetan Sarnıcı

Why? Most impressive reminder of the Byzantine water system

 Today it may be one of İstanbul's most atmospheric sights, but the popular Yerebatan Sarnıçı (Cistern) was once just a prosaic piece in the complex jigsaw of aqueducts and reservoirs required to bring water from the Thracian forests into the city. People may gawp in awe now at the upside-down carving of Medusa used as a column base, but its position shows that the builders saw it merely as reusable rubble for their latest project. The Aqueduct of Valens that straddles Atatürk Bulvarı was another piece in the same puzzle.

Land Walls

Why? Constantinople's protection until 1453

Coming in from Atatürk Airport visitors catch a passing glimpse of the great walls that once ringed the Byzantine city and protected it from its enemies right up until 1453 when Mehmet the Conqueror punched his way through them with the help of a Hungarian-built cannon. With time on your hands, you might like to walk the length of the walls from Mermerkule on the Sea of Marmara to the soaring towers at Ayvansaray on the Golden Horn. In doing so you will pass the renovated shell of Tekfur Sarayı, part of the lost Blachernae Palace to which the Byzantine emperors retreated after they recovered the city from the Crusaders in 1261. The walk is best done in company.

Church of St John the Baptist of Studion

Why? Battered remains of a once hugely productive monastery

Today only the outer walls survive in Samatya (Kocamustafapaşa) of what was once one of the most important monasteries in all of Byzantium, with a scriptorium in which monks produced some of the finest illuminated manuscripts. The church is slated for restoration. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it could be turned into a museum of Byzantine history?

Keywords: istanbul , iconic monuments , byzantium

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-343231-byzantine-istanbul-in-10-iconic-monuments.html