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91
ISTANBUL
||
THREE PERFECT DAYS
DAY ONE
| There may well be more historical sites in Istanbul
than there are grocery stores, so it’s in your interest to exit your
lustrous gold-tinted roomat
The Istanbul Edition
to see them, even
if your 9-foot-high rain shower is doing its best to convince you
otherwise. Reluctantly, you shut the thing off and get dressed,
grabbing a handful of fat-bo omed figs from the bowl on your
coffee table for sustenance. You wend your way downstairs,
past the subdued shimmer of the bachelor pad–style Gold Bar
(completewith prodigious fish tank) to ask a concierge for amap.
Your plan is to see the
Hagia Sophia
, the golden-domed Byzan-
tine church that was the center of the Orthodox Christianworld
until it became a mosque in 1453 (and then a museum in 1934).
First, though, you must contend with the subway, where you
approach a ticket machine and tap the
British-flag icon—a technique that has
proved effective onmultiple continents.
Here, however, a malfunction leads
the machine to start shrieking at you
in Turkish. You adopt a suitably sheep-
ish expression as a smiling a endant
appears and helps you buy a token.
You reach the Hagia Sophia and
gawp beneath its riot of mosaics—masterfully detailed down
to the blush in Mary’s cheeks—then walk next door to
Topkapı
Palace
, sliding into line to see the Ottoman sultans’ treasury.
Inside, you are dazzled and a li le disoriented by an array of pre-
cious stones—
emeralds the size of limes
—adorning everything
from scimitars to chalices. Finally it’s on to the pavilions, where
the sultans imprisoned various irksome family members (albeit
in luxurious cells).
Your a ention has justmigrated fromthe jewels to your stom-
ach when you turn a leafy corner and run smack into
Matbah
, a
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AREA, IN SQUARE
MILES
700
POPULATION
13.5
MILLION
POPULATION
GROWTH SINCE 1900
1,305%
NUMBER OF YEARS
IN THE BYZANTINE
EMPIRE
1,123
NUMBER OF YEARS
THAT THE TÜNEL,
THE WORLD’S
SECOND OLDEST
UNDERGROUND RAIL
SYSTEM, HAS BEEN IN
OPERATION
137
NUMBER OF SHOPS IN
THE GRAND BAZAAR
~4,000
NUMBER OF PEOPLE
A
DOLMUŞ
(SHARED
TAXI) CAN HOLD
8
WEIGHT OF THE
BIGGEST CHANDELIER
IN DOLMABAHÇE
PALACE (ONCE HOME
TOMUSTAFA KEMAL
ATATÜRK, TURKEY’S
FIRST PRESIDENT)
4½TONS
ISTANBUL, BY THE NUMBERS
MAKINGA SPLASH
From left, the ferry to
Kadıköy; the cavernous
Basilica Cistern; a local
tradesman in sultan attire
outside Topkapı Palace