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Istanbul is one of the greatest cities on earth, period. For thousands of years, this place where East meets West has been a crossroads of civilizations. And for over 400 years it was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. And those sultans left behind quite a legacy. We will see the historical monuments of this city, explore the Ottoman palace, admire the Sultan's treasures, be amazed by the Byzantine domes, wait with the faithful during Ramadan for the call to prayer, and descend into an ancient Roman cistern. We will immerse ourselves in the lives of local residents, explore exotic spices, have a delicious dinner with local "fire water", survive a fiery shave, and relax in an Ottoman bath.
Turkey connects Europe and Asia. Istanbul, its largest city, stretches along both sides of the Bosphorus Strait. Part of the city is located in Europe, and part is in Asia. The Golden Horn, long a strategic harbor, is crossed by the Galata Bridge, connecting the bustling New City with the Old City, which occupies a peninsula conveniently protected by a mighty wall. Here we will find the revered places of the sultans: the ancient Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the legendary Topkapi Palace. Although today the city is a vast metropolis with a population of over 15 million people, stretching along both banks of the Bosphorus, its older residents remember a time when only a million people lived here. In other words, most of the city is new, and
historical monuments are mainly concentrated in the compact old center. For centuries, this city was the capital of two great empires. During the Christian Byzantine Empire, which began in the 4th century and lasted for about a thousand years, it was called Constantinople. Then, in the 15th century, the Muslim Ottomans seized power and ruled what they called Istanbul until the end of World War I. Although the modern secular Republic of Turkey is governed from Ankara, Istanbul remains the country's financial, cultural, and historical center. But the history goes back even further than the Byzantine Empire. When the Roman Empire was
in decline in the 4th century, Emperor Constantine moved his capital from Rome in the west to here, to the less chaotic east. This was around 324, and the new capital was named Constantinople in honor of the emperor Then, in 476, Rome and its Western Empire finally fell. This made Constantinople here in the east the leading city of European civilization. Traces of the Roman capital can still be found here. This elongated square was a hippodrome, which still has a shape similar to the Circus Maximus in Rome. Built in the 4th century to seat over 40,000 spectators, the Hippodrome was the main venue for chariot races in Constantinople.
Its centerpiece, this 3,500- year-old Egyptian obelisk, was originally carved in honor of a pharaoh. It was brought here to decorate the hippodrome back in the 4th century. What we see today is only the top third of the original massive stone column. It is easy to forget that in 600, Istanbul, with a population of half a million, was the largest city in all of Europe. One of the best ways to appreciate this is to descend into one of its enormous cisterns, as the ancient city had an impressive water supply system. This cistern was built 1,500 years ago by Emperor Justinian, who built many of the city's grandest buildings. Some of these columns were taken from ancient temples, which added certain artistic surprises to the cistern It was a huge
underground reservoir, one of many that supplied water to the city's residents. This was the largest, as it served the imperial palace almost a thousand years, fresh water from a distance of 10 miles was brought here through pipes and aqueducts.
