Fodor's Pocket Islanbul, 1st Edition: What to See and Do If You Can't Stay Long (Travel Guide) - Softcover

Tales of the City
Though it is often remarked that Turkey straddles Europe and Asia, it is really Istanbul that does
the straddling: the vast bulk of the country resides comfortably on the Asian side. European Istanbul
is separated from its Asian suburbs by the Bosporus, the narrow channel that connects the Black Sea,
north of the city, to the Sea of Marmara, to the south. Already 1,000 years old when conquered by
Emperor Constantine in AD 326, Istanbul (then Byzantium, later Constantinople) was made capital
of the Roman Empire in the East and survived long after the western capital fall.
Most of the finest Ottoman buildings in Istanbul date from the time of Süleyman the Magnificent who
led the Ottoman Empire to its highest achievements in art and architecture, literature, and law.
Süleyman commissioned the brilliant architect Sinan to design buildings that are now recognized as
some of the greatest examples of Islamic architecture in the world.
Istanbul has its modern side, too, with all the concomitant traffic jams, air pollution,
overdevelopment, and brash concrete-and-glass hotels creeping up behind its historic old palaces.
But the city is more than grime and noise. Paradoxically, its beauty lies in part in the juxtaposition
of the ancient and the contemporary. Some of the perks that come with modernity are luxury hotels,
designer clothing stores, and Western-style department stores. These are today's monuments, which,
alongside the elegant mosques and majestic palaces built by and for yesterday's titans, dominate and
define splendid Istanbul.