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Published: February 22nd 2010
Hagia Sofia
Taken from the roof terrace of our apartment.This blog focuses on pictures from the Byzantine sights in Istanbul. Istanbul was a major Christian city called Byzantium (or Constantinople) until the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) conquered it in 1453. In the next blog, we’ll focus on Istanbul’s major Ottoman sights.
Who Knew?
By May We decided to come to Istanbul while we were in Bali. It was not on the original schedule at all, but after Malaysia, the ladies in the family felt like leaving Asia early would not be a bad thing. Istanbul was mentioned somehow - Jordan had studied some art here, Paul had an interest but not a thorough knowledge, and Ella and I just nodded our heads and smiled.
Well, who knew it would be such a great place. I’m so happy to have a month here. Istanbul is a great city to visit.
The Sights The sights are awesome. Before reading the guide books, I had no idea about any of them, but I have learned so much, and it’s all very interesting. The length of time people have been here building things is incredible.
Paul outlines Byzantine history briefly below, and I must admit
On the Land Walls
These walls were built in the 500s to protect Byzantium from land invaders. that before coming here I would have yawned at all that, but being in this city and actually seeing a column that was carved in Egypt in 1500BC and brought here in the 300s and walking through the huge Hagia Sofia, built in the 500s for goodness sakes, is incredible. We walk along walls that have stood for over 1500 years and were built to keep out invaders. My imagination gets all fired up. Picturing what life was like 1000 years ago is not that hard in Istanbul. It’s all right in front of you. All that history is real here and very cool to me.
The Food The food is incredible. I know we talk about how delicious the food is in every blog (I think our family really appreciates good food), but Istanbul’s food ranks right up there.
First off, it’s all recognizable. There are no chicken feet or smoked squid or mysterious, smelly balls of something on a skewer. There’s no raw meat hanging in the window.
Secondly, it’s much more affordable than we anticipated. Just now for lunch, Ella, Paul and May went to our corner kebob stand. Ella and Paul got chicken
kabob sandwiches. The kebob part is pieces of chicken stuck together on a giant skewer and rotated and grilled (looks like gyro meat at home). The bread is white large loaves, cut in half and toasted. They add pinches of spice, grated cabbage and carrots, chopped tomato and a red sauce from the chicken. I had a delicious soup that was reddish and smooth. It tasted like peppery, lentil pureed deliciousness (Paul got a bowl too). I also got a side of rice, that is very moist, buttery/chicken flavored. It’s too good to believe, and we all ate for US$6!.
There are tons of restaurants, and everywhere we pass, we want to stop and eat. They’ve got good breads for snacks that taste like a cross between a soft pretzel and bagel, these boreks, which are filo pastry dough layered with spinach or cheese, and cafeterias that serve up the best bowl of beans or eggplant casserole you can imagine. It’s so fun!
The sweets are good too. We’ve tasted baklava at several places, and it is always sweet and delicious . We’ve also tasted lokum, which is rolls of sugar dough mixed with nuts and coated with
coconut (I think). Lokum is also called Turkish delight and has the consistently of fudge but isn’t chocolately at all. It’s delicious too. We have an apartment with a kitchen so we usually eat in for breakfast and dinner and find good food out for lunch.
The People The people here are super friendly. Almost every time we stop to look at our map, someone will stop and ask us if we need help. Many people speak very good English here. On the busses it’s like a race to see which gentleman will get up fastest when an older woman boards. It’s the most chivalrous place we’ve been, I think. Once, I got up on the bus for an older woman, and a man sitting a few rows back immediately jumped up for me to have his seat.
Also, the men who sell things like Turkish carpets have senses of humor that mesh with ours. They’re very friendly and non pushy, even when they’re asking us to come into their shops. We can just smile and say “No thank you” and they’ll smile back and say, “You’re welcome.” Sometimes they say funny things like, “You look like Bill
Gates, come spend your money in my shop.” Or after asking where we’re from, they’ll say, “I’m from Texas!” We’ve also heard, “Now is the best time, because you are in front of my store.” It’s all said very light heartedly and with a big smile and it makes even shopping in places like the Grand Bazaar (which is known for pushy touts) a pleasant experience to us.
Overall, Istanbul is ranking high on my list of places to visit. We all like it and we have done a ton. Almost every day we’ve been out for part of the day to a historical site or a museum. It’s all been very enjoyable. I highly recommend this city as a family vacation destination.
Why Byzantium Matters (at least to me)
By Paul Before Istanbul was called Istanbul, it was called Constantinople; and before that, Byzantium. Byzantium is just ancient, dusty history, an old Greek / Roman city that seems irrelevant now.
And yet, there are currents of Byzantium that carry through to today, even in the US, even in North Carolina, even in Asheville. After outlining Byzantine history, I’ll lay out why Byzantium is still relevant
today, at least to me. Before we came to Istanbul, I wouldn’t have cared a whit about any of this - Byzantine Shmizantine. You may find the stuff below really, really boring. Feel free to skip it.
1100 Years of Byzantine History. Byzantium started as a Greek colony, then became a Roman colony. It became a crucial world city in 324 AD. A Roman emperor split up the empire into East and West, with capitals in Byzantium and Rome. The two co-emperors ended up fighting for the whole empire, and the Eastern emperor, Constantine, won. Byzantium (called New Rome, then Constantinople, by the Romans) became the capital of the entire Roman Empire. Also, Constantine was Christian; he made Christianity the official state religion (supplanting the Roman religion).
Rome soon fell to Gauls, Goths, and Vandals, and became irrelevant; yet Byzantium prospered. At its peak in the 500s, the Byzantine Empire nearly encircled the Mediterranean Sea, included thick slices of coastal land all along the Middle East and North Africa, all of southern Spain, and all of present-day Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
As Rome declined, Byzantium became less Roman, more Greek, and strongly Christian. It was the center
Little Hagia Sofia
This is the Baptistery of a Byzantine church, where people were baptized. It's now a mosque: See the Muslim graves next to the Christian Baptistery.... of the Christian world from the 300s to the 1400s, or at least until the Latin Christians (now called Roman Catholics) split off from the Byzantine Christians (now called Orthodox Christians) in 1054.
Byzantium / Constantinople was a major world city; it was the largest city in the world for most of the time between 300 and 600, and again throughout much of the 1100s. Although the Byzantine Empire was whittled away (much of it by Arab Muslims as they roared out of Mecca in the 600s and 700s), Byzantium remained unconquered until it was sacked by Western European / Latin Christians in 1204, as part of a Crusade, and finally conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks. Under the Ottomans, Byzantium was renamed Istanbul, and flourished again as the center of a second great empire - but that’s another story.
The adjective “Byzantine.” The way that Byzantium touched my life most obviously, before coming to Istanbul, was through the way that we use the adjective, “Byzantine.” “Byzantine” concretely means “of Byzantium, or of the Byzantine Empire.” But it also connotes either intrigue or deviousness, or excessive and unnecessary complication and intricateness. This connation comes from the Byzantine
Empire, where succession was never set and was determined by great intrigues, and where the bureaucracy was famously complex and intricate.
Byzantine Art. Another reason for Byzantium’s relevance for me is its art. Byzantium was a Greek and Roman colony, then a Roman capital. But unlike the Greek and Roman Empires, the Byzantine Empire lasted through to Western Europe’s Renaissance (the period when Greek / Roman culture was “re-born” in Europe). Byzantine art is in some ways the continuation or thread from Greek and Roman antiquity through to the Renaissance.
In the 1200s and 1300s, Renaissance sculpture and painting began to flower, first in Pisa and Siena and then a bit later in Florence. Throughout the Early Renaissance period, Byzantine art was the status quo across Europe. Byzantine art was what Italian Renaissance artists were reacting to and improving upon, but it’s crucial that they had Byzantine art to build upon. All of our Western art basically comes from or responds to Renaissance art, and Renaissance art basically comes from or responds to Byzantine art.
You can see the highlights of Byzantine art in Istanbul in these pictures. Many of the pictures are from three major sights:
The Great Palace Mosaics. Byzantium had a Great Palace, like the Forbidden City in Beijing or Versailles in Paris. It was pretty much destroyed by the Ottomans, as they built their own huge palace. A few mosaics survived, however. These mosaics are from the 400s, when Byzantium (Constantinople) was the capital of the Roman empire.
Hagia Sofia. The Hagia Sofia is one of the most famous Christian churches in the world. The current church (later turned into a mosque, now a museum) was built in 537. It was the foremost imperial Byzantine church, and it is huge. It was dark - we went on a rainy day - so you can’t really see the pictures of its interior, but they do hint at the vastness. Hagia Sofia’s mosaics, some of which are shown here, date from the 800s through the 1200s.
Chora Church. This is another Byzantine church, with mosaics and frescoes from around 1320. It is supposedly one of the most beautiful Byzantine churches still standing.
So across these three, we have mosaics from the 400s (Byzantine Great Palace), the 800s through the 1200s (Hagia Sofia), and 1320 (Chora Church). In the 400s, Roman culture
On the Land Walls
These walls were built in the 500s. There are obviously no railings, and it's high - so it's a bit scary. was still very much alive, and Byzantium was the capital of the Roman Empire. By 1320, the seeds of the Renaissance were sprouting in Florence, and Italian painters and sculptors were responding directly to Byzantine art like the mosaics in the Hagia Sofia and Chora Church.
The Byzantine Empire and Christian Beliefs. Also interesting is the Byzantine Empire’s impact on current Christian beliefs. The Byzantine Empire was the first time that Christianity was the state religion, the first time that Christianity was merged with institutionalized power and empire. Many of the beliefs that Christians take for granted, as givens, were set during Byzantine times, with imperial backing from the power of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine emperors called together all of the major Christian leaders in their empire in a series of seven large gatherings, occurring fairly regularly between 325 and 787, to settle the theological questions of the day. At the time, there seems to have been a fairly wide range of beliefs among Christians, with no agreement on what Christians should believe, or what defines Christian belief (as opposed to heresy).
For instance, in the first gathering (convened by Constantine in 325 and held near Byzantium),
Hagia Sofia - Interior
The interior of this church, built in the early 500s, is huge - but it was too dark (rainy day) to capture with our camera. they settled issues like: Was Jesus a regular guy, was he the son of God, or was he both? They also set a date for Easter. They also made an agreed-upon statement of belief (called the Nicene Creed, after the town where they met) that defined what Christians believe. Most Christians still use the Nicene Creed today.
So, my understanding is that many of the ideas and beliefs that Christians take as given and set (e.g., Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Mary as the mother of the Son of God) were very much unsettled, unclear, not-agreed-upon, muddied, confused, and controversial in 325 (and in subsequent years).
Byzantine emperors called together Byzantine church leaders across their empire (the first Christian empire). Those Byzantine leaders decided collectively what beliefs should define Christian belief. The Byzantine emperors then backed up those decisions about Christian beliefs with brute power. People who dissented, who believed things different than what the gatherings decided, were excommunicated, kicked out of the Christian Church, and exiled, kicked out of the Byzantine Empire (which covered most of the Christian world at the time).
In some ways, it seems that many of our basic set of Christian beliefs,
Hagia Sofia
From the roof terrace of our apartment - you can see how huge it is, and how it looms over the city. even the Protestant Christian beliefs most common in the US, were at least partly set and determined by the political power the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantium and Orthodox Christianity. Another interesting history related to Christianity is the particular form of Christianity practiced in Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire.
Between 300 and 1000 or so, Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire were the torchbearers of Christianity, and the center of the institutionalized Christian Church. Then in 1054, the Latin (Rome-based) Christians split from the Byzantine Christians, resulting in the first big split in the Christian Church - a split into Roman Catholic Christians (Rome and Western Europe) and Eastern Orthodox Christians (Byzantium and Eastern Europe). The second big split was the Protestant Reformation, in the 1500s and 1600s; now we have Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Protestants.
I grew up thinking most Christians were Protestant (because the US is largely Protestant), and there were a few Catholics running around out there somewhere. I never heard anything about Orthodox Christians. Actually, Catholics are the most numerous Christians by far, and there are roughly as many Orthodox Christians as Protestants.
The Orthodox Church, which is basically the Byzantine Church, survived various
Hagia Irene
Another Byzantine church; like Hagia Sofia, from around 530 or so. suppressions (first Muslim Ottoman Turks, then Soviets), and it now thrives in countries running roughly northeast from Greece to Russia (e.g., Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Russia). Technically, the Orthodox Church is still based in Byzantium / Constantinople / Istanbul, even though there are few Orthodox Christians still here.
A few summers ago, when we went to Mexico, we invited a guy from Warren Wilson College named Jordan stay in our house while we were gone. Jordan was a good guy, good to our dogs, took good care of our house. One of his main interests was (and may still be) Orthodox Christianity. In Asheville we have a noticeable population of refugees from Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia - Orthodox Christians persecuted under the Soviets. Apparently there is an Orthodox Christian monastery outside of Asheville, and Jordan had studied there a lot. So, Byzantine Christianity survives and thrives, at least in some form, even in Asheville.
In the end, though, all the stuff May wrote is much more relevant than the stuff I wrote. I love Istanbul as a tourist destination, not as a historical place. It’s really fun here. The heck with all this history-shmistory. Let’s
Basilica CIstern
Cistern (underground water reservoir) built in the 500s. It still exists, and has been renovated tastefully. go out and get some baklava.
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Saltuk Erdem
non-member comment
Great Palace and Crusaders
You are sayin in the article that: "The Great Palace Mosaics. Byzantium had a Great Palace, like the Forbidden City in Beijing or Versailles in Paris. It was pretty much destroyed by the Ottomans, as they built their own huge palace. A few mosaics survived, however. These mosaics are from the 400s, when Byzantium (Constantinople) was the capital of the Roman empire." You are transmitting incorrect information here. This palace and Hippodrome was destroyed before Ottomans took the city by the 4th Crusaders at 1204. Hagia Sophia also was almost destroyed. Building has been demolished by the same Crusaders. Many valuable items, treasures of great Hagia Sophia have been taken to Rome and Venice by the Crusaders. Hagia Sophia neglected, palace and Hippodrome was in ruins when Ottomans started to live in this great city. Then Ottomans started to take care of Hagia Sophia. That's why we can see beautiful mosaics of Hagia Sophia and great dome. It's been always easy to sue Ottomans for everything happened bad and has been done by someone else like Crusaders. Turks always respected other Civilizations' values. You can see this fact every where in Anatolia and Europe.