Jenni in London: Nine days and nearly done

Our holiday is winding down and the weather is perfect so wandering to see the things left undone was the plan for the day. Bob saw a notice about this exhibit in Time Out Istanbul monthly magazine when we arrived, so we headed to the other side of the Golden Horn.

The exhibition was not very exciting because there were no original maps on display, just photographs of very old maps that will be available as a coffee table book on historic maps. The university art center building hosting the exhibit was much more interesting. The Cannon House was the Ottoman Empire's military foundry established by the Conqueror himself, although this building dates from the early 19th century.

The exhibit's focus was cartography prior to 1513 when the Piri Reis map was drawn using sources that have long been lost, including Columbus's original maps of the Caribbean. Only the western third of the map is extant, but that includes the east coast of Brazil making the map one of the earliest maps to include depictions of the New World. Piri Reis was an Ottoman admiral and cartographer, and the map is in the Topkapi Palace Library collection. ( I forgot to take a photo of the photo map, so this image is borrowed from Google images.)

Then we moved on to a truly unique museum, Turkish Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence. As a young writer, he conceived the idea of writing a novel told through the material objects that define a person's life in the place where the life is led. He began collecting everyday objects with a vague idea in mind for the novel, which as he writes in the book about the museum (above right) became an obsession during the late 1990s. When he began seriously planning the project he realized he had to have a place to set the novel before he could begin writing if the idea was to work.

He bought and renovated this house, which is now the Museum of Innocence, as he wrote the novel with the same name. Open to the public for rather an enormous fee (25 Turkish Lira, the same price as a ticket to Haghia Sophia or to Topkapi Palace) unless you are carrying the book with you. Then you are admitted free. Bob's copy (above left) bought for 25 Turkish Lira – you can do the math, but at least we now have the book to read, not just a ticket stub — gave him free admission and a special stamp on page 520. (I also borrowed this photo from Google images.)

The museum has a special vitrine display for each of the book's 83 chapters. Above are Chapters 2 through 5. Not having yet read the book, traveling through the 83 chapters was fascinating. Through the artifacts, I have an idea of the events that transpired, but no grasp of the story line. No photos were permitted, so this too is from Google images.