Istanbul: the East-meets-West Turkish city that has seen empires rise and fall, and has the historic sites and great food to prove it
- Previously known as Byzantium and Constantinople, Istanbul has throughout its 2,500-year history been a gateway between East and West
- Attractions such as the Hagia Sophia mosque, Grand Bazaar, Topkapı Palace, Basilica Cistern and Galata Tower tell tales of past empires
The Pera Palace, Istanbul’s most dignified and historic hotel, stands in the Beyoğlu district, a tangle of streets and staircases lined with appealingly battered belle époque mansions.
They tumble down steep hillsides overlooking water in three directions, and were part of the expiring Ottoman Empire’s 19th-century flirtation with European institutions and architecture.
When it opened, in 1895, the hotel, the first in the city built to European standards and intended for passengers arriving on the Orient Express train from Paris, was viewed as ultra-modern, and was home to the city’s first lift. But the district as a whole was ahead of its time, served by what was only the world’s second fully underground railway, the Tünel.
Inaugurated in 1875, this subterranean funicular still provides a comfortable ride up and down from the confluence of the narrow estuary of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, the threadlike waterway linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, which connects to the Mediterranean.
On one side of the Bosphorus is Europe and on the other Asia. For once the expression “East meets West” is entirely appropriate.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Turkey was seen by Europeans as intriguingly oriental, but not dangerously so, and Istanbul as engagingly louche.
