![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/05\/DSC08043-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a>Museum of Istanbul.\u00a0\u00a0The guidebooks said it\u2019s a good museum, partly because it doesn\u2019t attract the throngs who flock to the big attractions the way crowds do to the Forbidden City\u2014or the ball games of some teams in Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0The information was accurate about the lack of crowds, but the articles on display had some world-class items.\u00a0\u00a0The most important (bear in mind the museum has artifacts primarily from within the Ottoman Empire, which included the \u201cOrient\u201d\u2014the Near East) items were sarcophagi from Sidon, which were the reason the Ottomans built the neoclassical museum in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0Huge burial boxes, well preserved, the tomb with the sculptures of Alexander the Great drawing the most attention; the King buried in it had battled on the side of Alexander, and the frieze commemorates their relationship.<\/p>\nThe other outstanding area was a look at Greco-Roman statues, arranged chronologically\u2014all from places that had been either Byzantine or Ottoman, and I\u2019m happy to say that not all the Pergamon relics are in Berlin (and yes, there are some in Pergamon); Turkish antiquities required even in The other part of the museum I especially Unfortunately, part of the museum with Byzantine relics was closed\u2014for earthquake proofing (I keep forgetting the Mediterranean is a ring of fire), and perhaps as part of Turkey\u2019s bid for the 2020 Olympics.\u00a0\u00a0Actually, it was fortunate, because if the Byzantine materials had been there, I would not have gotten to the other \u201cmust sees\u201d on my checklist.<\/p>\n Second on my list for the morning were the Byzantine Cisterns, but on the way, I detoured when I passed Hagia Sophia and saw a sign that said the Sultan tombs were there, and \u201cfree.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s one of my favorite trigger words, and you don\u2019t see it much in Istanbul (not even special prices for seniors!) There are only a few, but one was designed by Sinan, quickly One of the tombs had an interesting art story. The Turks shipped the ceramics to France for restoration.\u00a0The French copied the items and gave the copies to the Turks.\u00a0\u00a0The originals are in the Louvre!\u00a0\u00a0So much for honor!<\/p>\n For the afternoon, I joined a Grey Line tour going through the former Pera My day began at\u00a03 am, when I woke up to wish our students a pleasant flight home.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re probably in Chicago by now. Here\u2019s what I did on my own: My touring began at 8: 15, when I headed for the tram to finish at least three more checklist items in the morning. The first was … Continue reading “On my own”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talking-turkey-2013-on-my-own"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9571,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions\/9571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century that some of the Sidon sarcophagi had to stay where they were.\u00a0\u00a0The exhibit on Troy did note part of an ongoing archeological battle over ownership we\u2019d seen elsewhere: that materials in one museum \u201cought\u201d to be somewhere else\u2014in this case not the New Museum in Berlin!\u00a0\u00a0And one exhibit righteously noted that the mosaic, pictured in Istanbul, had been given back to its rightful ruler.<\/p>\n enjoyed was \u201cIstanbul through the Ages,\u201d an exhibit that featured what was and what is, with some wonderful explanations of what happened.\u00a0\u00a0I learned, for example, that Bosphorus means \u201cox ford,\u201d and it came to prominence when Darius and the Persians used a series of boats as a bridge to advance to battle the Greeks; I think one of the monuments to the Greek victory eventually wound up in Istanbul.\u00a0\u00a0(Is it time for Greece to get indignant?)<\/p>\n<\/a> becoming my favorite Ottoman architect; whole families are usually buried together, but Murad (III, I think) had over 100 children; the family had a second tomb with a lot less decoration.\u00a0\u00a0Interestingly, one of the tombs occupied the former baptistery.<\/p>\n<\/a>The cool cistern (in more ways than one) was the result of an effort on behalf of the Emperor Justinian to guarantee a water supply for the palace area, obtained from an area 18 miles away via a series aqueducts\u2014another indication of the superior technical state of Byzantium over Western Europe at the time!\u00a0\u00a0520 feet long, 100 feet wide, the \u201cholding tank\u201d is supported by a series of columns that would have done a temple proud.\u00a0\u00a0Two pillars had wonderful heads of Medusa \u2013on the bottom, not the top.<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a>I also wanted to see what was left of the hippodrome, never having spent any time at what was the athletic complex of the Byzantines.\u00a0\u00a0What\u2019s left essentially are boundary markers\u2014the Obelisk Theodosius brought from Egypt and the pillar Constantine brought from Delphi. An added treat was finding the \u201cMillion\u201d\u2014part of a triumphal arch from which all distances in the Eastern Roman empire were measured.<\/p>\narea on the other side of the Golden Horn to the Dolmabahce Palace. I was not prepared for the 1850s neoclassical and rococo palace Abdulhamid built to replace the Topkapi Palace and indicate Turkey was a European power at a time when the Ottomans were desperately trying to modernize to keep the empire together. Greece had already sought its independence; I think Egypt had gotten its; Turkey, England and France were fighting Russia in the Crimea\u2014and Abdulhamid had spent money building a palace that rivaled the big ones in Western Europe.\u00a0\u00a0My favorite room reflects the efforts of Germany to woo the Ottomans\u2014a vase from Kaiser Wilhelm, with his picture on it, and a statue and picture of Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor during the last half of the 19th century, as Germany and the Ottoman Empire forged the ties that helped bind them in a death dance in World War I based on their common enmity to Russia that would topple both the German and Ottoman Empires (as well as their Austro-Hungarian allies)<\/p>\n<\/a>I treated myself to dinner in a restaurant I\u2019d spotted last night in the Suleymaniye mosque area.\u00a0\u00a0Adjacent to the mosque, the restaurant was built by noted court architect Mimar Sinan, and the menu featured \u201cSultan\u2019s Delight,\u201d a lamb and eggplant dish I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen at home\u2014but then, we don\u2019t have any Sultans in Bloomington-Normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"