On Sunday, we decided that it would be a museum day. We started at the Hagia Sophia Museum which was around the corner from our hotel. This building was built around 527 AD as a church. The church is large enough that the Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris) could fit inside! A walk through the Hagia Sophia will leave you pretty close to breathless. It has beautiful Christian mosaics. Around 1400, with the conquering of Istanbul, it was converted to a mosque. It definitely has the feeling of a beautiful marriage between Eastern and Western design. In 1935, the mosque was declared a national shrine and became a museum. It was wonderful to see that the Christian mosaics were not destroyed when it was converted; and, Islamic mosaics and other trappings were just added.
We then visited the Topkapi Palace which is the largest historical attraction in Istanbul. The extensive grounds consist of numerous buildings that were the home to a long succession of Turkey’s sultans and even a longer list of their wives. The display of jewelry (including an 89 carat diamond surrounded by 49 smaller diamonds), swords & armory were outstanding. The best buildings were the sultan’s harem with 400 rooms and a maze-like interior; however, we were only allowed to see a fraction of the rooms. This large facility not only housed his concubines (who were controlled by his mother) but also African guards and eunuchs that cared for the concubines. The harem consisted of a number of buildings isolated from the rest of the palace and the most outstanding was the Sultan’s mother’s apartment.
Other museums we visited, were the History of Science & Technology in Islam and the Mosaic Museum. Both were interesting but not exciting. There is a deep history of science within the Islam communities and many key discoveries preceded the Europeans.
Sunday in Istanbul is clearly “family day”. The streets and parks were absolutely packed with families. We had visited one particular park on Wednesday; but, on Sunday you could barely see the grass!
