Eight Days On

I can understand why people are so intrigued by Istanbul. The history is so deep, with so many layers, and somehow they all still have a presence in the city today. Moving through the city is moving through a time machine of cultural history. Today was not an entirely successful day in that we were looking forward to visiting the Naval Museum, only to discover on arriving that the museum will be closed until summer to complete the building works of a huge new wing. At the ferry terminal next to the museum was this huge monument to Barbarossa, the pirate, the slave trader, the diplomat, and the admiral of the Ottoman fleet during the 16th century. 

Nearby the closed Naval Museum was the closed Dolmabaçe Palace. The palace is regularly closed on Thursday, so we were not surprised or disappointed, but in the time travel history, this is the palace built by the modernizing sultans of the 19th century to pull the mouldering Ottoman Empire into the world of European glamour. They gave up the medieval Topkapi in favour of a place where the royalty of Europe could drop by for a visit. Of course they didn't give up the bizarre world of the Harem when building a modern palace. Jason Goodwin's 4-volume (so far) mystery series about Yashim the Eunuch set in  the 1830s is a wonderful resource for painlessly learning about the lives of the Ottoman rulers.

The next step in modernising was to create a shopping street promenade like  other European capitals. The  Grande Rue de Péra was lined with shops and cafés and embassies and churches (but not mosques). Today with a Turkish name Istiklal Caddessi, it is indistinguishable from Oxford Street in London except that it is technically pedestrianized . . .

. . . and has a charming San Francisco style cable car running on the old tram tracks.  The street is on  the eastern side of the Golden Horn, and the street is so steep that there is a funicular — a very modern funicular – that runs to the top of the street from the Bosphorus side and another that runs from the Golden Horn to the bottom of the street.

Many of the grand old buildings still line the street. The embassies have become consulates now the Turkish capital is in Ankara. Old hotels and shopping arcades offer a taste of how Grande the Rue once was,

Returning to our Time Travel, Istiklal ends abruptly at the lower  funicular, and the 19th century reverts to a medieval warren of nearly impassable alleys pitched at a roughly 45 degree slope down to the Golden Horn. Once upon a time, this area belonged to the Italian city state of Genoa. When the Fourth Crusade army decided to sack Constantinople in 1204 rather than go on to Jerusalem, after they packed up the city's treasures and sent them to Venice and other Italian city-states, Constantinople was parceled out to the Italians. In the 1260s, when the Greek Palaeologus family recaptured Constantinople, they cut a deal with the Italian city-states to keep areas of the city for trading concessions. The Genoese kept Pera and built fortified walls around their concession including the Galata Tower rebuilt in 1348 from a 6th century lighthouse.

Other buildings are still in use that were part of the medieval Genoese community.
 The Italian concessions were ended when the Conqueror took Constantinople, although Pera continued to be the quarter where Europeans lived during Ottoman rule. Another group who populated this area late in the 15th century were the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and invited by the Sultan to settle in Istanbul.