01 – Istanbul
Istanbul
(For more photos and Google Map locations of these photos, be sure to visit the
gallery section. Clicking on the photos will take you to that specific image in the gallery.)
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In many ways, Turkey is something of a “second holy land”. Since the city of Ephesus is in Turkey, this is the country where several of the stories of the book of Acts takes place. Paul’s missionary journeys cris-crossed this country. The first national Christian church took root and sprang to life here.
Ahh, the Bosphorous Straights.
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Homes here are kinda interesting. Istanbul has a population of over 14,000,000 people. That’s a lot. The overwhelming majority of residences we saw were like this: close, stacked, doing laundry and satellite linked.
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Here’s our dinner. Our local tour guide kept trying to get us to take a $20 tour on the Bosphorous and see all sorts of cool stuff from the shore. We were more interested in going to the Istanbul Museum to see some Biblical items there. For some reason, that was off the table, so we decided to go to the Hagai Sophia and Blue Mosque and then go back to the airport to wait out the rest of our 12 hour layover.
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More commonly known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque is a pretty impressive piece of architecture. Built from 1609-1616, it contains the tomb of Sultan Ahmed, a madrasah (school for Islam) and a hospice. These days, it also functions as a tourist site.
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Here’s a panorama of the courtyard of the Blue Mosque.
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The interior of the Blue Mosque. Muslim worshipers actively use the building, so you have to take off your shoes when you go inside.
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The paint (tile?) on the ceiling is really quite exquisite.
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Hagai Sophia
The Hagia Sophia is one of the largest churches in the world, and a classic example of Byantine architecture. Originally built by Constantine, it was destroyed twice before being recreated for a third time by Emperor Justinian I in 532. It took 5 years to build at a cost of billions of US dollars (in today’s money), and remained the largest church in the world for almost 1,000 years. It’s so popular, it appeared in a James Bond movie (From Russia With Love). When the Turks conquered Istanbul in 1435, they converted it to a mosque and, as is their custom, removed all faces from the icons inside. When Turkey became independent in 1935, it was converted to a museum.
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Here’s the exterior of the Hagai Sophia.
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The Hagai Sophia’s interior
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(For more photos and Google Map locations of these photos, be sure to visit the
gallery section. Clicking on the photos will take you to that specific image in the gallery.)
