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By Hilary Sumner-Boyd
On hand for the first time when you consider that its unique ebook thirty-seven years in the past, this vintage advisor to Istanbul through Hilary Sumner-Boyd and John Freely is released in a very revised and up to date version. Taking the reader strolling via Istanbul, the ecu urban of tradition 2010, the authors describe the historical monuments and websites of what used to be Constantinople and the capital, in flip, of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, within the context of the nice dwelling urban. Woven all through are anecdotes, mystery histories, hidden gemstones, and each significant position of curiosity the visitor should want to see. useful and informative, readable and vividly defined, this can be the definitive consultant to and tale of Istanbul, by means of those that understand it top.
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Additional resources for Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)
Example text
Here are buried the foundress of Yeni Cami, Turhan Hadice, her son, Mehmet IV, and several later sultans, Mustafa II, Ahmet III, Mahmut I, Osman III and Murat V, along with countless royal princes and princesses. The small building to the west of the türbe is a kütüphane, or library, which was built by Turhan Hadice’s grandson, Ahmet III, who ruled from 1703 till 1730. Ahmet III was known as the Tulip King, and the period of his reign came to be called the Lale Devri, the Age of Tulips, one of the most charming and delightful eras in the history of old Stamboul.
The great square of opus Alexandrinum in the pavement towards the south-east of the nave always attracts attention. It is chiefly composed of circles of granite, red and green porphyry and verd antique. According to Antony, Bishop of Novgorod, who visited the church in 1200, the Emperor’s throne stood upon this square, surrounded by a bronze enclosure. There are some equally interesting marble panels above the imperial door: slabs of verd antique alternate with inlaid panels of various marbles.
Glorious as is the dome, it is the introduction of the semidomes which constitutes the real triumph of genius. For in addition to lengthening the nave, they make it possible to appreciate from the very threshold the soaring, hovering height; they allow the dome, in short, to play its true and full part in the total effect. Contrast the relative ineffectiveness of such a dome as that of St. Peter’s, from which radiate barrel-vaults along the axes of the buildÂ�ing. That dome, though higher and somewhat greater in diamÂ�eter than Haghia Sophia’s, is almost insignificant, for it can only be seen when one is very nearly underneath it, so that one must crane back one’s neck to get a view of it at all.