After a good night’s rest I was ready to see some of Istanbul. Yesterday was a bright sunny day here but it’s overcast so the colors aren’t as brilliant. I won’t complain though because there’s no rain in the forecast and it’s sweater weather.
Tomorrow I have an all-day private tour booked for the old city so today I decided to take a cruise on the Bosporus. It’s a very good way to get a different perspective of the city. I boarded my boat very near my hotel and off we went. We headed up the Bosporus in the direction of the Black Sea. The boat traveled along the European side of Istanbul on our outbound leg. Along the way we passed an interesting assortment of old and new buildings down at the water’s edge, many private residences. The guide on the boat said that many of the individual houses sell for upwards of $10 million, one for $90 million. The newer buildings are made of brick but there are many old ones that are wooden. I wonder what the maintenance is like on those.
Old wooden house between two modern ones
We passed a palace that belonged to the Sultan and is now a museum. It is enormous! The Sultans clearly lived well. There were plenty of mosques in the neighborhoods we passed and at one point there was a call to prayer from them and the sound echoed across the water.
We passed under the first bridge built across the strait, officially called the 15 July Martyrs Bridge, which was completed in 1973. At the time of its completion it was the fourth longest suspension bridge in the world and the longest in Europe. The clearance under the bridge is 210 feet so large ships are able to pass under it and the other two spanning the strait.
On the European bank near the bridge is an interesting old fortress built by Sultan Mehmed II in 1452. The fortress is named Rumeli hisari, but in Mehmed’s time it was called Bogazkesen, which meant literally “strait blocker” or “throat cutter.” At the time of its construction it was north of the walls of Constantinople and from there the assault of the city was made. Directly across on the Asian side was another fortress built by Mehmed’s grandfather. At the time Mehmed II became sultan Constantinople was still under Christian control. Europeans believed when he became Sultan at the age of 19 he would not be hostile to the Christian countries in Europe. They were very wrong! In 1453 he conquered Constantinople (present day Istanbul) and the Ottoman Empire began two hundred years of conquest in eastern Europe. They gained control of the Balkan peninsula, parts of northern Italy, Rhodes, Malta and other Greek islands, Hungary and incursions into Poland. They were finally stopped at the gates of Vienna, Austria in 1683. We don’t learn a lot about that empire in schools, but at one time the Sultan in Constantinople controlled all those parts of Europe as well as the present countries of Syria, Israel, and much of North Africa.
Fortress from the other side of the Bosporus
Our voyage went under another bridge at the narrowest point of the Bosporus and then crossed over to the Asian side. We stopped at a little neighborhood called Kanlica which is famous for its yogurt. My shipmates had some yogurt but I passed since I had a nice breakfast not much earlier. We headed back down the Bosporus passing a Turkish military school and a hunting lodge for the Sultans. The area around it was evidently a place for good hunting and the sultan needed a little shack to stay in when he went there. It’s pretty clear that Sultans lived large.
Military School
Before we crossed back over to our starting point we sailed by a little island with a tower on it. The legend goes that a sultan had a beloved daughter that he wanted to protect so he built the tower to house her. That sounds more like punishment than love to me, but what do I know. Just beyond the little island is the Sea of Marmara which is a branch of the Mediterranean. I’ll be cruising through there after I board on Sunday.
Well, I’ve given you more Ottoman history than you probably ever wanted to know, so that’s it for now.
2 comments:
All the history is really interesting! Thanks for sharing it.
We did that cruise, too. So interesting! I agree that your history is so interesting and helps bring the trip together. Thanks!
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