Instead at the Izmir otogar we caught a minibus to Selcuk for 8 lira each. A friend of mine from Lonely Planet had suggested a great guesthouse there and even though I’m not crazy about crowd filled historical tourist sites, I wanted to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. The ride to Selcuk took us about an hour.
The Istanbul Archeology Museum and the Basilica Cistern
Hanane and I decided to head back to Sultanahmet to see some of Istanbul and Turkey’s ancient history. Our first stop was the Istanbul Archaeology Museum which is located near the Topkapi Palace inside Gulhane Park. The museum has more than a million objects in its collections many of them from Byzantine, Greek, Roman, and even earlier civilizations.
The Hippodrome of Istanbul and Turkish Sim Cards
What I saw as a nice rectangular park with some old monuments in it was actually a Byzantine race track which used to have two levels of seats on the outside and where chariot races used to excite the crowds for more than 1200 years. The chariot teams were really political parties called ‘Greens’ and ‘Blues’ and so it was part politics and part sport for the Byzantine Emperors and chariot fans.
The Blue Mosque of Sultan Ahmet
The Sultan Ahmet region is named for Sultan Ahmet I who ruled from 1603 to 1617 AD. The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, known as the Blue Mosque was built near the Aya Sophia to provide a greater wonder than that of the Hagia Sophia. It was commissioned by the Sultan and designed by Mehmet Aga and [...]
For 1000 Years, the Aya Sofya in Istanbul, Turkey was the world’s largest church….
Mainly because I’d played a lot of Civilization, the name I knew this monumental building by was the Hagia Sophia. In fact, that’s the Greek name. The Turkish call it Aya Sophia. The Romans who built it called it Sancta Sophia in their fancy pants Latin. Any way you say it, the name translates to [...]
