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

396 Pages·2009·4.81 MB·English
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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/à 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

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