The Rough Guide to Istanbul, 1st Edition (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

396 Pages·2009·4.81 MB·English

by  Rough Guides

J>;HEK=>=K?:;je
İhiVcWja
HEK=>=K?:;I
?IJ7D8KB
:1‘BMESL‘[‘
&:Ã1 / C_b_jWho :*-%*;
cWi
CPJ/*4é_[<"
9d^/$a["
&ZWh%Č3h\_:c/W&kch,"dOL[1oh_*E<Wb[_\WIJj[lb^\[Zh[WIkhhéhpk=IZcWo"hj:WIW7o;&"7WfJ'/_9bh"[4éd?\"WZ[^3l>Wb[">#W:j_h_"hWc-kdWch"bcW_<75pZ[cZi8[_o_5W_9ad>hl;hZWhW9<_W5WZocodb[Whb]_8ijJ_c‚_Wa[^Ie_W[WXWF_\hjhbF=o_[fWcjI[Whj^<éojhj[)jP_[a["<[<hd4[,_<½d
Aé[f_[d:9W8aW=D[h^hWZb[khhDAEh[ZW7YcAbo7<9Ghd_]d^=<ohW[joJ[:CJWW[”^7iWh[>j[Chjhb<9eéDh[ah[hihhcW9o[Z_ahcWco_Xi7aohWeWfJWJ_he_Knchi[WédAb[oWbéd5_hWh_IWfJcW_bcblij[,"9W[_4éhČ_.dcZW1dhc"ĞWic_"Wfkb_bWdjc_o_iWWb 9k8Jbj(?#I:FW"&e7ki-:"0jaW5hąj"hj<-46jW"hiKCW3[h"±afd:_j6bd[ch,W”=B6é[X39C=_d5$hoh>l6hWk.o[YiWaY"[k_beb^ijdƒb5Whi05WkJW71"j[)ji,[F"4d[jihW/*.D]_&Wk[Wj[aX)iW"$okc3bČdkW)J#"W*:i/9&eh_b(YČ73ahWmC[h?ocij[_)e%BWF_SjCN1h_JoBZPSWFLKbLI_S‘1B[BT[,SdJLJ"j?d‘#hd"W9Xh5."_d"ĞZlW±kW,"[Id_cbckh[”Jcmi_c[__Wjaioo7d_%^0D_-.a"H#F")E±W& =iCCWDCF:WkG9Whe_iJ^W_b[jWchcH_k#_cY&Ğc*Wc_,[5_"[XбW*3"W^ąÃ"4^/,Ã9%Y"3[Wc__
,"3",½O: [hWbjé9Wc__
LOW[b_dZ_[
6-6,6-&
<Wj_^9Wc__'"5*) H”ij[c 9Wc__
;&:3&, FWiW9Wc__
9WfW>eif_jWb 7gkWZkYPj[oh[a9Wc4Ã-&:_._"/*:& O[d_9Wc__
e\LWb[di ?ijWdXkb
"SLF1PBMPSLKJ Kd_l[hi_jo &.Č/½/Ã JefaWfé
#±PVTSLUBVOS
>
>>eWWiiif[[_ajaW__b L9WWb",c_4"Z3":[__ B9WWbc[b___ Ie8Aa=9WeWhWpbfWbWhWkdiWbZ_hé F$"W/I,67b3e5W"3o\"Y/oW[W IjJC8Wek_jc_ieXWdhewI\CW_dhéiW5édéhié )"3&. 4F1MBJNSLJZ‘ F4&-*.*:&
9Wc__ C[^c[j IkbjWdW^c[j9Wc__
,6.F,"1W* iW9Wc__ 8bk[Ceigk[
8BUF:SFGOSPJLOBUQ1‘BSL‘
I”b[ocWd_o[ Sultanahm5eitjWdXkb Beyoğlu, Galata and the
9[>hehiLWHNf^:_fj6WDbiW;B6G5B[96^WGBpc6W_X_Z_h[Wh?oi<jWW
Ydk TSTXb kjih orabBkeeKr_ ej\odnlG[Ica_uhlorYiWn[n _arj[ahdkdtnidnh _ Yd[wjCdw[o98 C aAkBWkeEdklhW_a slmb_bisZYzY[t[W_ IdaidfkqjnJ”Zk]Wacku[böbhr[hh[9a enoa^iaW\cr_üWinct9dW^ eCd[_Wdr_9kc _o[i[_h[_Wkcc_Yei\ BAT ehSwsseieaia ktnB etr ora>ehfsrip oVahcrnnotWtds rjd uaOissr t&trai kcBtölsayck
About this book
Rough Guides are designed to be good to read and easy to use. The book is divided
into the following sections and you should be able to find whatever you need in one
of them.
The introductory colour section is designed to give you a feel for İstanbul, suggesting
when to go and what not to miss, and includes a full list of contents. Then comes
basics, for pre-departure information and other practicalities.
The city chapters cover each area of İstanbul in depth, giving comprehensive
accounts of all the attractions, while the listings section gives you the lowdown on
accommodation, eating, shopping and more. The beyond the city chapters describe
excursions further afield.
Contexts fills you in on history, music, film and books, while
individual colour sections introduce Ottoman architecture and
eating out, and language gives you an extensive menu reader and
enough Turkish to get by.
The book concludes with all the small print, including details of
how to send in updates and corrections, and a comprehensive
index.
This first edition published July 2009.
The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and
currency of all the information in The Rough Guide to İstanbul, however, they
can accept no responsibility for any loss, injury or inconvenience sustained by
any traveller as a result of information or advice contained in the guide.

US$19.99 CAN$22.99
I S B N 978-1-84836-068-6
5 1 9 9 9
9 7 8 1 8 4 8 3 6 0 6 8 6
The Rough Guide to
İstanbul
written and researched by
Terry Richardson
www.roughguides.com
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 1 3/4/09 4:24:28 PM
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 2 3/4/09 4:24:33 PM
Contents
Colour section 1 IJ N
Thigeh Atlriftes............................. 21054
Introduction ............................... 4 K Gay and lesbian İstanbul... 222
What to see................................ 5 L Shopping .......................... 225
When to go ................................ 8 M Sport and activities ........... 237
Things not to miss ................... 10 N Kids’ İstanbul .................... 243
Basics 17 Out of the City 247
Getting there............................ 19 O The Princes’ and Marmara
Red tape and visas .................. 24 islands .............................. 249
Information and maps.............. 25 P İznik and Termal ................ 259
Arrival ...................................... 27 R Bursa and Uludağ ............. 267
City transport........................... 29 a Çanakkale, Troy and
Costs, money and banks ......... 35 Gallipoli ............................. 283
Mail, phones and the internet ... 37 b Edirne ............................... 298
The media ................................ 39
Opening hours and public
holidays ................................... 41 Contexts 309
Festivals and cultural events.... 43
Travel essentials ...................... 45
Language 349
Guide 51
1 Sultanahmet........................ 53 Small print & Index 365
2 Sirkeci, Eminönü and
Tahtakale............................. 80
3 The Grand Bazaar and Ottoman art and
around................................. 88 architecture colour
4 The northwest quarter....... 101 section following p.112
5 The land walls ................... 113
6 Beyoğlu, Taksim and the
waterfront districts ............ 123 Eating out colour
7 Beşiktaş and Ortaköy........ 145 section following p.240
8 Asian İstanbul ................... 152
9 The Bosphorus and the Black
Sea resorts........................ 160
Colour maps following
Listings 173 p.376
G Accommodation................ 175
H Eating................................ 186
3
왗왗 Swimming in the Bosphorus 왗 Yerebatan Sarnıçı
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 3 3/4/09 4:24:38 PM
| CONTENTS |
Introduction to
İstanbul
İstanbul is unique. The only city in the world to straddle
two continents and to have played capital to consecutive
Christian and Islamic empires, its location, at the
crossroads of Europe and Asia, has helped it shape the
region’s history for over 2500 years. Built, like its original
inspiration, Rome, on seven hills, the city (in its former
guise of Constantinople) was the centre of the Byzantine
Christian world from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries
AD – the formidable six-kilometre-long land walls, the
imposing bulk of the church of Aya Sofya, and the delicate
mosaics and frescoes in the Kariye Museum are just some
of the wonderful remnants from this period. The Ottomans,
who famously conquered the city in 1453, have left an
even more impressive legacy, and it is the domes and
minarets of their many mosques that dominate the skyline
of the Old City, endowing it with the “oriental” exoticism
that so enthrals Western visitors.
With a population estimated at anything up to 25 million,
stanbul is a metropolis going on megalopolis, a teeming,
vibrant urban centre that can make other European cities
seem dull in comparison – not least because it has a far
younger age-profle than any EU city. A city this size may
seem an anomaly in a country where half the populace
still work the felds in remote villages, but in many ways
booming stanbul – its inhabitants comprising migrants
4 from every corner of the land – is Turkey. It may have been stripped
of its capital status back in 1923, but stanbul exerts a powerful, almost
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 4 3/4/09 4:24:40 PM
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
mystical hold on
the psyche of the
nation, and remains,
in the minds of all
Turks, the country’s
foremost city, its
cultural, economic
and intelectual
heart.
No one could
deny that stanbul
has its concerns. A
city whose popula-
tion has increased at least twelvefold since the establishment of the Turkish
Republic in 1923 is bound to have sufered from such rapid urban
growth. Trafc congestion, pollution, rising crime rates and water short-
ages are just some of the “human” problems successive stanbul mayors have
had to deal with.
Despite the problems, however, there’s a buzz and confdence to stanbul
that makes everything and anything seem possible. Foreign investment
has poured in, particularly from the Gulf States, once-rampant infation
is down to single digits, tourism is booming and the city has become
a major conference and congress centre. The stanbul Biennial is an
established arts festival of worldwide importance, there are vibrant music
and flm festivals – and, in 2010, the city will be a European Capital
of Culture. It’s little wonder support for EU accession is dropping.
stanbullus know their vital metropolis can, if necessary, stand alone
and take full advantage of its unique
position between Christian Europe and
the Muslim Middle East.
What to see
or most visitors, stanbul is a city
of two halves: the Old City,
superbly sited on a triangular
Fpeninsular pointing across the
Bosphorus towards Asia, and the loosely 5
defned district of Beyo#lu, on the
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 5 3/4/09 4:24:46 PM
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
왔 Worshipper at Eyüp Camii
왖 St Stephen of the Bulgars in the northwest quarter
The Bosphorus
Geographically, historically and strategically, the Bosporus, the thirty-
kilometre-long strait connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean (via the
Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles) and dividing Europe from Asia, is
one of the world’s crucial waterways. With a medley of tankers, ferries
and fishing boats weaving their way up, down or across its glittering blue
waters, it is also one of its most visually stunning, best appreciated from
the waterfront terrace of the İstanbul Modern or one of the many fish
restaurants that dot its shores.
The river derives its name (“Ford of the Cow”) from a Greek myth in
which, as retribution for Zeus seducing Io, Hera, Zeus’ jealous wife,
turns the unfortunate Io into a cow. Pursued by an angry horsefly, Io
swims the straits to flee her tormentor. Were Io to attempt her escape
today, she’d most likely be mown down by one of the eighty thousand
or so ships that pass through each year, a consequence of the 1936
Montreaux Convention, in which Turkey was bound to allow free
passage, despite the obvious dangers of so much shipping using such a
narrow strait (a mere 700m at its narrowest). Many of these vessels are
ferries, whisking commuters from their homes in Asia to their workplace
in Europe, but a fifth of them are tankers. In ancient times, ships laden
with Scythian grain from the Black Sea hinterland sailed through en
route to the bread-hungry citizens of Pericles’ Athens. Today, Russian
tankers filled with oil and liquefied gas ply the same route into the
Mediterranean and fuel-starved Europe, helping make the Bosphorus
the second busiest waterway in the world.
other side of the Golden Horn. Most of the major sights are in the
former, in a remarkably compact area, easily explored on foot. At its heart
is the historic district of Sultanahmet, an area of twisting, cobbled lanes,
overhung by quaint old wooden houses, and studded with landmark
buildings from the powerful Byzantine and Ottoman empires: the Aya
Sofya, the Hippodrome, Topkapı Palace and the Blue Mosque.
West of Sultanahmet, the university district of Beyazit is dominated
by the Grand Bazaar, an exotic “shopping centre” that has been doing
business for over fve hundred years, whilst to the north, nudging up to the
waters of the Golden Horn, lie bustling Sirkeci and Eminönü, the former
famous for its grandiloquent station, eastern terminus of the Orient Express,
the latter for the olfactory delights of the Ottoman-era Mısır Çarısı or
Spice Bazaar.
The atmospheric northwest quarter boasts the wonderful Byzantine
church of St Saviour in the Chora, now the Kariye Museum and, a little
beyond it, the mighty land walls of Theodosius. It’s in the backstreets here,
6 particularly around the ultra-orthodox Fatih district, where visitors will
fnd the “traditional” stanbul of young women garbed in headscarves and
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 6 3/4/09 4:24:47 PM
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
skull-capped men sipping sweet black tea whilst waiting for the next call
to prayer.
Across the Golden Horn lies the old “European” quarter of Beyo#lu,
an area of graceful nineteenth-century apartment blocks that has become
the nerve centre of a booming arts, cultural and nightlife scene, focused
on stanbul’s major shopping street, stiklal Caddesi, and epitomized by
the waterfront stanbul Modern gallery and a rash of trendy rooftop bars.
Here stanbul girls in skimpy tops and miniskirts rife through fashion rails
whilst well-heeled socialites pick over exorbitantly priced sushi.
Recent improvements in the transport infrastructure, notably the tram and
funicular railway, mean it’s relatively quick and easy to get from one sight-
seeing area to another – even the far-fung sites in Asian stanbul are well
linked to the Old City and Beyo#lu by ferry. The ferry ride alone makes
a trip across worthwhile, with the nightlife of Kadıköy and the Ottoman
architecture of Üsküdar the major attractions.
Beyond the domes and minarets of the Old City, and the high-rise
ofce blocks of the commercial districts, lies the blue, ship-flled streak
of the Bosphorus. North of the city centre, the river is lined on either
side with swish village-cum-suburbs; these can be explored by bus but
are best seen from the decks of the Bosphorus Cruise, which zigzags
between Europe and Asia as it heads up the strait to the pretty fshing
village of Anadolu Kavagı.
There’s plenty to see
outside the city, too. South
of stanbul, out in the Sea
of Marmara, the charming
Princes’ Islands, with their
horse-drawn carriages, fn-
de-siècle wooden villas, pine
forests and beaches, have
long provided a summer
retreat from the bustle of
the city – and are cheap
and easy to reach by ferry.
Edirne, a former Ottoman
capital, is famed for the
marvellous Selimiye Camii,
one of the world’s most
beautiful mosques, and
its oil-wrestling festival.
Edirne is best accessed 7
by bus, but you can use
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 7 3/4/09 4:24:48 PM
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
왖 Café culture
either bus, or a combination of
Station to station: bus and high-speed ferry, to get
Sirkeci and Haydarpaşa to legendary Troy, the World
Immortalized in Graham Greene’s War I battlefelds of Gallipoli,
Stamboul Train and Agatha Christie’s “Green” Bursa, draped across the
Murder on the Orient Express, the slopes of towering Uluda#, or
train that linked Paris and Vienna the laidback, rural retreat that is
with İstanbul became a metaphor lakeside znik.
for style, opulence and, of course,
intrigue. The eastern terminus for
the Orient Express was Sirkeci
station, opened with great fanfare in
1888, right in the heart of imperial
İstanbul. Designed by Prussian When to go
architect August Jachmund, it was
an oriental fantasy, with a Parisian- stanbul and its environs have a
style dome, minaret-like turrets and
relatively damp climate, with
Moghul-influenced windows.
The Orient Express connected hot, humid summers and cool,
Europe with the capital of the İrainy winters with occasional
Ottoman Empire, but across snowfalls. The city is at its best
the Bosphorus in Asia another in May and June, then again in
temple to travel would soon September and October, months
arise: Haydarpaşa. Completed in that ofer the perfect combination
1908, this German-built station,
of dry, warm (but not overly hot)
a monumental, mock-castle
structure with stunning views back weather and long daylight hours
across the water to the domes
and minarets of the Old City, is
even more splendid than Sirkeci.
The station was part of imperialist
Germany’s great scheme to link
Berlin and the Persian Gulf by rail
– a grand plan that never quite
reached fruition. Even today,
though, it’s still possible to alight
in Sirkeci, hop on a ferry for the
short but dramatic ride across the
Bosphorus to Hayadarpaşa, and
then board a train across Anatolia
bound for Aleppo in Syria.
The Golden Age of travel may
be long gone, but these two great
stations, both likely to be sidelined
by a massive transport regeneration
8 scheme, retain the spirit of a more
glamorous era.
00 Istanbul_1 Colour intro.indd 8 3/4/09 4:24:50 PM
왔 The “Evil Eye”, the Grand Bazaar
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO