A powerful executive dangled the invitation before me as I was sitting across a glass desk from him on one of the upper floors of the Starrett-Lehigh building on West 26th Street: “How does Istanbul tempt you? We’re opening a new hotel there.” I looked out the window at my favorite river, the mighty Hudson, and must admit I was more beguiled by a waterway half a world away. 

In all European travel there is no spectacle more tremendous than the sight of Istanbul massed beside the sea. It’s a solidification of history, jumbled houses and docks and palaces along the shore, mighty domes and soaring minarets, ships and ferries swarming everywhere, rumbling traffic over terrific bridges. This is a timeless metropolis, familiar to travelers for a thousand years: So wrote the late Jan Morris, the British travel writer and author.

Few cities represent as ravishing a meeting of substance and pure spectacle as Istanbul. Palaces and bazaars, grand mosques and churches, and of course the Bosphorus, flowing from the Black Sea past the Golden Horn and the heart of the city to the Sea of Marmara. The European part of Turkey straddles the western banks of the narrow strait and Asia starts on the eastern shore, making Istanbul the world’s only city built on two continents.

In the sixth century BC, Byzantium was a colony of the ancient Greek city of Megara, and only much later did Constantine the Great move the seat of the Roman Empire here. For more than a millennium and half this was the capital of empires: With the advent of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453, Constantinople became the seat of the Ottoman Empire, before taking the name of Istanbul with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. In Istanbul, traditions from not only Islamic but also Christian and Jewish faiths rub shoulders easily with the vibrant, if often misunderstood, mosaic that is contemporary Turkey.  

Bosphorus and the Golden Horn

The Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosphorus, flows between the commercial center of Karaköy and Sarayburnu, or the Old Seraglio Point promontory that is home to the Topkapi Palace and Sultanahmet Square. Opposite the Golden Horn and adjacent to Karaköy is the old district of Pera, settled by Genoese and Venetians in the 12th century and home of the Galata Tower, built by the Genoese. The ornate Dolmabahçe Palace, formerly a sultan’s palace and now a museum, is on the European side of the Bosphorus, in a historic area of mansions and elegant yali, or waterfront wooden villas. A boat excursion along the Bosphorus is a great way to soak up the visual pageantry.

Topkapi, on the Seraglio point, is the definitive Ottoman Turkish palace. Its construction started in the 1460s by order of Sultan Mehmed II, and it is where the sultans held court. The palace houses the Mukaddes Emanetler Dairesi (Chamber of Holy Relics), where the Prophet Muhammed’s Hırka-i Saadet (Blessed Mantle) and Sancak-ı Şerif (Holy Banner) are kept in golden chests. Other treasures include the jewels of the Sultans, ornate swords, chalices set with precious stones, the emerald-encrusted Topkapi Dagger, and a throne encrusted with 18,000 pearls. The palace also housed Janissary quarters for the elite Ottoman troops and some 400 rooms that were part of the famous Imperial Harem.

Hagia Sophia and Basilica Cistern

The first Christian Emperor of Rome, Constantine, ordered the Saint Sophia to be built in the year 347 as an imperial church, and with 50 tons of gold, multicolored marble and upwards of 170 pillars from other temples (including those in Athens and Ephesus). It opened 16 years later — only to be twice destroyed by fire before Justinian the Great rebuilt it in 552. For more than a thousand years it was the center of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity, before Mehmet the Conqueror had the huge structure with its signature colossal dome converted to a mosque in 1453. 

In 1935 the Hagia Sophia was converted yet again, this time to a museum; many of the original Byzantine mosaics, such as the one depicting the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus and Constantine and Justinian standing on either side, have been restored. A cultural counterpoint to this is the cathedral-sized Basilica Cistern, slightly southwest of the Hagia Sophia. It is an elaborate underground network of cisterns built by some 7,000 slaves during the Early Roman period to supply water to the Great Palace (and later to Topkapi Palace). Vaulted roofs and spectacularly floodlit columns confer a sense of splendor on what might otherwise be a gloomy subterranean chamber.

Sultanahmet Square nearby is the heart of Istanbul’s most historic peninsula and home to some of the finest works of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, including the Sultan Ahmet Mosque or Blue Mosque. Completed in 1616 and the world;s only mosque with six minarets, it has 138 windows and gets its name from the blue tiles that line its interior. Close to it is the Obelisk of Theodosius and the ancient bronze Serpentine Column, which is on the site of the Hippodrome. This was the ancient “circus” or sporting center of Constantinople. 

A Tale of Two Bazaars  

Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the Kapalı Çarşı, dates back to 1461 and along with the Spice Bazaar is one of the most thrilling stops you’ll make in the city. Originally, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror set up the covered bazaar as a way to generate income for the upkeep of the Hagia Sophia and it remained an important spot for trade throughout Ottoman times.  

Today you will find everything from antiques to jewelry, gold, and handcrafted (i.e., not made in China) tchotchkes in more than 3,000 individual shops. If you don’t haggle at a least a little, then you’re going about it all wrong. The Spice Bazaar, also called Mısır Çarşısı or Egyptian Bazaar, was built a bit later, in 1660, and was meant to support the New Mosque. A hundred or so shops sell jewelry and souvenirs in addition to loads of spices and dried fruits and nuts. There are also treats like Turkish delight and pistachios covered with dark chocolate. Nestle makes a square-shaped version of the latter — perfect for nibbling on the flight home.

Coda

As it turns out, I did not take up the executive on that invitation, which was to visit the W Istanbul, a by all accounts very nice property set in a renovated 19th century property behind the Dolmabahçe Palace and close to the Golden Horn. Not in the cards for your humble correspondent to “live like a king in the W rendition of opulent seraglios,” as the hotel’s own description promises, nor to doze in “a signature W bed and a whimsical harem of stylish luxuries.” Oh, well, my memories of Istanbul precede all that; in my weary mind flits a glittering and somewhat ghostly presence, defined by dark, flowing waters and the countless boats that ply them.