At the beginning of our month in Istanbul we spent a day with Oscar, a friendly and extremely knowledgeable tour guide. He took us to five important and popular sites on the historical peninsula of the city.

Sultan Ahmed Mosque – Even though parts of the exterior and interior of this large mosque are under renovation, we were still wowed by its beauty and grandeur. As you can see in the picture above, we had to stand quite a distance from the mosque in order to get the whole complex in a photo. Accommodating up to 10,000 worshippers at a time, the 17th century mosque includes 13 domes and six minarets. We wish we could have seen the 43 meter-high  and 23 meter-wide main dome from the inside, but at least the ceiling scaffolding displayed a very large photo of the dome design. The religious complex, more commonly known as the Blue Mosque, displays beautiful, interior hand-painted blue tiles and blue lights that illuminate the exterior each night until dawn. 

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Hippodrome – This park was once the sport and social center of Constantinople. Many spectators came to watch the chariot races and perhaps participate in the occasional riot. In order to make the city more impressive, Constantine and some of his successors added artwork from various parts of the empire to the center of the hippodrome. Our guide Oscar explained the history of three pieces of art that we saw here. The Obelisk of Theodosius, originally part of a temple in the Egyptian city of Luxor in the 1400s BC, was added to this site by Theodosius the Great in 390 AD. To move the pink granite column, it was cut into three pieces. Only the top third of the obelisk now stands on a marble base in the park. The 3.500 year-old piece of artwork is in amazingly good condition. 

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Originally standing in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Serpent Column was created to celebrate the Greeks’ victory over the Persians in the 5th century BC. For some reason the top of the column, which featured three serpent heads supporting a golden bowl, was not moved to Constantinople. Recovered fragments of the serpent heads can be seen at the Istanbul Archeological Museum. Only the base of the column now stands in the former hippodrome site. The Walled Obelisk has a quite different history. Instead of moving artwork to the hippodrome, 10th century Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus commissioned this obelisk to be built at the south end of what is now called Sultan Ahmed Square. Unfortunately the gilded bronze plaques covering the stone core were stolen during the Fourth Crusade,  so it does not look very beautiful now. 

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Basilica Cistern – Water from the Belgrade Forest, 19 kilometers north of the city, travelled through the aqueduct system to fill the 10,000 square-meter cistern during the 6th century. The artificial reservoir was built underneath a 3rd and 4th century Roman basilica, and over the centuries it provided water for royal palaces of the Constantine and Ottoman Empires.

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As the largest of hundreds of underground cisterns in the city, Basilica Cistern includes 336 marble columns that support a vaulted ceiling that continues to drip water on visitors. Oscar showed us the two marble column bases that feature heads of Greek mythological Medusa. One is sideways and the other is upside down. He explained the most popular theories on the unusual orientation: 1) intentionally done to negate the powers of Medusa’s sisters 2) accidentally done because the builders covered up the faces during placement in order to avoid a curse from looking at Medusa’s face or 3) intentionally done to provide the best height and strength to support the columns.

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Topkapi Palace – Now a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site, the palace served as the main residence and administrative headquarters for Ottoman sultans during the 15th to 19th centuries. We walked through many of the beautifully preserved buildings and had the opportunity to appreciate the views from the royal gardens and terraces on the southeast side of the peninsula.

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Grand Bazaar – Even though we don’t buy many souvenirs these days, we still enjoyed walking with Oscar through some of the large, 500 year-old shopping area, which includes 2,000 stores and restaurants. The friendly sales people tried to entice us with their beautiful household, clothing, and food items. Like the Basilica Cistern, this historical site was featured in a James Bond film. Daniel Craig (more correctly his stuntman double) raced on a motorcycle across the bazaar’s rooftop in the 2012 movie Skyfall. And during filming at the Grand Bazaar, a stuntman unintentionally crashed a motorbike through the window of a 330-year-old jewelry shop after swerving to avoid film extras. A few years ago the Turkish government invested 30 million Turkish liras (about 4 million USD) to restore much of the bazaar after years of neglect and damage from James Bond’s two-wheeled ride on the roof, unauthorized additions, illegally installed satellite dishes and air conditioning units, as well as an old, leaky roof.

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