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Random Places Around Istanbul

These are the places that don't really fit in anywhere else. Some of that is because they deserved more attention than I gave them, I screwed up my visiting time or it was just a nice place that doesn't fit any other category

Little Haghia Sophia

A lovely, little quiet mosque on the shore of Sultanahmet. {Image Source, © User:GGia/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Gulhane Park

Once part of the Topapi Palace, now a bit of peace and quiet in the city.

Basilica Cistern

An underground water tank with a load of columns. Wow, exciting. (Photo credit, User:Gunpowder Ma, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

The Hippodrome

Constantinople's race track. Run round it and pretend you're Charlton heston.

The Blue Mosque

Everybody thinks the big grey dome in the centre of Istanbul is the Haghia Sophia. It's not. It's the Blue Mosque.

Beyoglu

The other half of European Istanbul. Modern and busy.

Little Haghia Sophia

Of everywhere I went in Istanbul, the Little Haghia Sophia mosque is the one I remember. For two reasons.


The first reason, it was the first place I went on my first morning in Istanbul. I was staying at the bottom of the hill behind the Blue Mosque, just along the street from the mosque. It's a quiet area, too far down the hill for most tourists, and I walked along the street in the morning sunshine. The start of December, it was sunny but cold.


The mosque is in a square lined with apartment blocks and a handful of cheap grocery shops. The low dome pokes up behind a wall. I stepped through a gate in the wall and it took me into a sunny courtyard. On the right was the medresse, an arcade of little cells, each with its own chimney. On the left was the mosque.


It was originally the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus but with its dome and buttressed walls it got the nickname of Little Haghia Sophia. It actually predates the Haghia Sophia by a few years and, apart from the fact that it has a dome and was a church, I never really saw much of a resemblance between the two.


It's a beautiful little building. Old and crumbling but it also looks loved and cared for. It's not dressed up for the tourists. I took off my shoes and left them on a shelf by the door and walked inside in my Cookie Monster socks.


The inside is fairly plain and white. There's some decoration but not much. It's a peaceful space and bright. Just a nice place to be. It was also the first mosque I had ever set foot inside.


Which brings me to the second reason I remember it. It was my first (and only) time I have ever been thrown out of a mosque in Istanbul. I was admiring the domed ceiling, trying to be all impressed when a hand dropped on my shoulder like a rock. A guy in a black leather jacket spun me round, pointed at the main door and pushed me towards it. I didn't argue and a second later I'm back outside in the sunshine.


I have no idea what I did. There was another couple there, a pair of English tourists, and as far as I could tell I was oing exactly the same as they were. Only I guess I was doing it in the wrong way and the security guard or caretaker or whoever he was took great offence and I got the bum's rush.


As much as I have a soft spot for Little Haghia Sophia, it made me paranoid for the rest of my time in Istanbul. It's pretty hard to avoid mosques as a tourist, there isn't much there that hasn't been converted to one. Instead, my approach was make no eye contact, keep moving and avoid men in black leather jackets. For the rest of my visit I felt like I was playing a human version of Pacman whenever I entered another mosque.


For now I did what any man would do. I stomped off in a sulk.

In the far wall of the courtyard of Little Haghia Sophia is a small gateway. It leads to a path that takes you under the railway and along the coast to the remains of the Bucoleon Palace. There isn't much of it left, a few windows in the remains of the sea wall that marked out the face of the Roman palace. It's overgrown and crumbling now and like a lot of the Roman ruins (that no-one has put a ticket booth on and called a museum yet) is now home to winos and tramps.


All over Sultanahmet you'll see Byzantine arches and doorways and tunnels in the sides of cliffs or at the ends of alleys. Get close enough and the scent of piss will hit you. What is left of the palaces of the most lavish empire the world has seen now gives shelter to the homeless of Istanbul.

Gulhane Park

I love city parks. The busier the city, the more I love city parks. Gulhane Park is one that I love.

It's nothing special. It probably would have been, it had been part of the gardens of the Topkapi Palace. But not now. It is just a strip of greenery at the foot of the outcrop the palace sits on. It has a few scruffy monuments, even a Roman column at the far end but otherwise it's just some long pavements lined with plane trees and park benches.


You can escape here. All the chaos and crowds of Sultanahmet, they stop at the gate. The park is quiet and green in contrast to the built up city outside. A city that invented urbanisation 2000 years ago.


Every day at some point I ended up here, just enjoying the quiet. There are street vendors at the gates, selling simits and ice cream. Buy something. Walk in the sunshine. Sit down for a moment.

The Basilica Cistern

When something is described as a "must-see" then you need to be suspicious. The Basilica Cistern is a must-see. It's one of those places that you see and think, wow! And then think, now what?


It is what it says. A big cistern. The Romans really invented the profession of civil engineer and they did it well. They imported water from the Belgrade Forest, a long way outside the city, and they built a lot of infrastructure to do it. The Valens Aqueduct was part of that network and Vefa Stadium is built inside what was a Roman reservoir.


But it is still a giant water tank. Once you've seen it, you've seen it. OK, I am shitting on an icon, it's used as a location in From Russia With Love and a ton of other films. It's impressive when you first see it.


But after that, what do you do? It's just a big hall with a load of columns. All the columns look the same. Apart from one, predictably the furthest from the entrance. There's not really an awful lot to look at once you have taken it in. If you are like me, a cheap bastard, you will want to get your money's worth from the ticket price. To spend more than half an hour in it then you really are dragging it out. I watched a Chinese couple taking selfies of themselves in different spots. Here we are next to a column. Here we are next to another column.


My advice? Save it for your final stop. They don't take cards so use up your leftover change on a ticket. If you have enough, great. If you don't? Buy a kebab and just watch From Russia With Love when you get home.

The Hippodrome

Watch Ben Hur and you'll see the Hippodrome of Constantinople.


Unless you have really good imagination then that's the only way to see it now. All that is left of the Hippodrome is its outline, marked out by At Meydane Square. A long, thin rectangle of paving that sits along the side of the Blue Mosque.


The central spine of the race track is marked by the two obelisks and the bronze serpent column at one end and the Kaiser's Fountain at the other. These are where the turning points of the circuit would have been. The end wall, the sphendone, can be seen in the foundations of the modern buildings at the top of the hill that leads down to the sea. The Imperial box, the kathysma, is somewhere around the tourist shops in the outer wall of the mosque.


If you want to get an idea of the scale of the Hippodrome then try running a circuit of it. It's a long way. Hang around late at night and you'll occasionally see cops doing laps of it in cars or on motorbikes. Which just goes to prove that no-one ever grows out of being seven years old, the toys just get bigger.


If you have a look at the serpent column you'll see it sits in a pit a couple of metres deep. That's where Roman Istanbul is now, six feet below your feet. The columns sit on the original level of Constantinople. The cisterns aren't the only ancient places that exist underground.


The whole city is hollow. The Haghia Sophia sits on top of a network of flooded tunnels and chambers that have been explored by divers. All that is left of an important Imperial church is now the cellar of a nearby hotel.

The Blue Mosque

I never made it into the Blue Mosque. WHich is incredibly stupid as it is the building which dominates Sultanahmet.

Every time I was in the vicinity, it seemed to be either filling up for prayer time or emptying at the end of it. I never managed to actually time it right to get inside.

The courtyard outside is a pleasant place to sit in the sunshine. It's the kind of place that it is easy to let your mind drift and convince yourself you are a lot further east than you really are. It's a good reminder of how easy a city Istanbul is for experiencing Islam. It's not a super-conservative religious state of the Middle East. It's a remarkably accommodating and very European culture which just happens to be predominantly Muslim. Istanbul is not much different to Barcelona or Prague, instead of an old church being on every corner, here it is a mosque.

Outside, the place is thronged with hawkers and people taking selfies. There's even a tasteless arch set up especially for photographing yourself next to the Blue Mosque. Inside, in the courtyard, is an escape, a place of calm.

On the Hippodrome side is a gate and hanging there is a chain in an inverted Y. This is the Chain of Humility. Only the Sultan was allowed to enter on horseback and the chain was put there so that even he had to bow his head in order to enter.

Beyoglu

Crossing the Galata Bridge was a big step. I'd just spent four days in the "old" part of Istanbul: Sultanahmet, Fener and Eyup. Across the Golden Horn was the "new" Istanbul and a big part of me was thinking why waste time on stuff that isn't really old?


On my last day, mainly because I was tired, I went to Beyoglu to see the modern city. Honestly? I failed.


I got there and was faced with a big, busy junction. There's traffic on the other side but not real, modern city traffic. I couldn't figure out how to cross the first major junction that I hit, ending up cutting through some underground shopping mall. After I found my way out I had no idea where I was. I headed uphill with good intentions. Go see the Galata Tower. The underground mosque. Take the funicular. Go see the Dervish monastery. Instead I got lost, stuck on a street of tool shops. I couldn't figure out how to buy a jeton for the funicular. I got to the underground mosque at prayer time so couldn't get inside. It was hot and it was smoggy. In the end, I just thought "fuck that" and turned around.


I crossed the Galata Bridge back to the other side. I walked round the New Mosque. I bought a simit. I sat in the sunshine in Gulhane Park.