This 2,600-year-old metropolis is the former capital of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. It is a city where you are greeted with warm hospitality, Mediterranean culinary culture, melancholic music, a rich history, remains of ancient civilisations and traces of early Christianity.

The walks featured in this book take in aspects of the past and the trendy neighbourhoods, as well as the clubs and restaurants that have made Istanbul Europe’s coolest party city.

Walking in Istanbul offers four informative, self-guided walking tours. Two are on the European banks of the Bosporus; the other two are on the Asian side. They take five to six hours and will allow you to witness all aspects of life in the city, as well as its history.

You will pass by and visit centuries-old sultans’ mosques, churches from the Byzantine era, Armenian and Greek churches, a cemetery with a million graves, the Babylon music venue, trendy restaurants, hidden courtyards and simple food stalls and street vendors selling traditional Turkish snacks, such as stuffed mussels, tripe soup and grilled lamb intestines.

Every walk starts with a description of the district and an explanation of the most convenient way of getting there by public transport. As you walk, you will be amazed by the abundance of sights, the architecture, shops, tea rooms, restaurants, clubs, galleries and people. The best way to get to know Istanbul is on foot!

Enjoy your self-guided walking tours,

Marc

Order your walking tour(s) online here

http://bit.ly/13xB8Sc

“Cab drivers did not have to do anything up until last year. Anyone who wanted to become a driver was permitted to drive a cab. For the first time, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has introduced a registration system for cab drivers. Those with a criminal record were identified and not licensed.”

“We are now working on a project, the ‘cab driver license’ project. Those who hold this license will be able to become cab drivers. Under this project, candidates will be tested about first aid knowledge, professional training, anger management and foreign language competency. These are essential. I hope we will be able to do it.”

Toll-free hotline for complaints

“We introduced a toll-free hotline via which the customers can register complaints so that the cab drivers are disciplined. I can say that the number of complaints declined after this line was set up.”

Uğur said there are 18,000 cabs and 35,000 cab drivers in Istanbul alone, but he is not sure if it is really possible to train all of them. However, this could be done in time.

The taxi complaint hotline is 444 15 23 and 325 15 15.

Source: Sunday’s Zaman

May 5, 2013

Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Museum of Innocence’ opened the 27th of April 2012, four years after the release of the novel The Museum of Innocence in 2008.

During the first year, 40,000 people have visited the Museum and it is the most mentioned Turkish museum in the world press.

15,000 of these visitors were from abroad and 10,000 were students.  In addition to that, 6,500 of the visitors had their ticket stamped on the last chapter of their books and visited the Museum for free. The visitors have especially bought Füsun’s earrings and Kemal’s broken heart along with the posters and postcards in the Museum Shop. The most frequently asked question to the museum staff was about the missing photographs of Füsun and Kemal.

Hence, the leading names of the contemporary art and literature were among the visitors of the Museum – Glenn Lowry, Director of MOMA (New York); Dr. Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of exhibitions of TATE (London); Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Curator of the 13^th Documenta; Catherine Dezegher, Curator of the 5^th Moscow Biannual and Umberto Eco are few to name. As Eco was accompanied by Orhan Pamuk at the tour to Museum of Innocence, he paid most attention on the ‘East-West’ Clock and once more proved that he is a good reader when he asked why Füsun’s earring was missing in the box no: 47.

Following the nomination of Museum of Innocence for the architecture category of the Designs of the Year Awards of the Design Museum London, the replica of the Box 14 (Edition 1/5) ”Istanbul’s Streets, Bridges, Hills, and Squares” is being  exhibited at the Design Museum with the support of the British Council .

In addition, the 26^th chapter of the Museum of Innocence ‘An Anatomical Chart of Love Pains’ has been the source of inspiration of an exhibition opened on the 13^th of April in a contemporary art space named Model, in Ireland.

Reading Kemal Basmacı’s words, ‘Museums: 1. They are not for visiting, but for feeling and living’, the visitors came to the Museum, located in a historical building made in 1897, and met many forgotten details of the époque 1950-2000 in Istanbul. They found gas lamps in the Box No: 10‘City Lights and Happiness’; the pictures of actors and football players rolled in chewing gums at Box No:12‘Kissing on the Lips’; the ships of Istanbul at Box No:41 ‘Swimming on My Back’; the favorite family game bingo in Box No: 58, the passion of Turkish Classical Music in the Box No:67 Cologne. Lovers sat hand in hand in the penthouse where Kemal Basmacı has lived between 2000-2007 and contains the last four chapters of the novel.

Visitors viewed scenes depicting Istanbul’s past from the collages of old Turkish movies; pleasantly listening to the ferry sirens, clock ticking, footsteps of people walking on the pavement, children playing or music of taverns and sounds of people dining at restaurants at the Museum of Innocence, which is also a hub for the sounds and scenes of the city.

Visitors who traveled from different corners of the world only to see the Museum, inscribed their feelings at the memory book of the Museum: those being grateful for the existence of the Museum that cherishes Füsun’s memory and immortalizes the story; describing the Museum as ‘a temple created for the power of the word’ or confronting ‘not only with a love story but also the story of a city’ are few of these.

In The Museum of Innocence, which Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has been working on for approximately fifteen years and which he describes as “a small and modest museum of daily life in İstanbul,” objects embodying daily life in İstanbul in the second half of the twentieth century are displayed in carefully designed boxes and cabinets. The museum’s eighty-three boxes, which correspond to each of the eighty-three chapters of the novel, display a collection of thousands of objects ranging from cinema tickets to matchsticks, liquor bottles to doorknobs, and small ornaments to photographs.

Address:

Firuzağa Mahallesi, Çukurcuma Caddesi No: 24 34425 Çukurcuma/ İstanbul

Telephone: Museum (switchboard): 0090 212 252 9738

Visiting Dates and Hours:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday:

10.00-18.00

Friday: 10:00 – 21:00

The museum is closed on Mondays

For further information

0090 212 252 9738

info@masumiyetmuzesi.org

http://www. masumiyetmuzesi.org

Archaeological digs among the ruins of what used to be known as “The City of Emperors” are conducted since 1990. Every summer a group of 80 students and experts do research at the site, coordinated by archaeology professor Marc Waelkens from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

Before you visit the archeological site you can have a good impression of the site and the work that’s going on. Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul is home to a unique exhibition featuring photographs of the ancient city of Sagalassos through the lenses of Belgian photographers Bruno Vandermeulen and Danny Veys.

But this is not an ordinary photo exhibition: it focuses on the discussion of “interpretation process” in contemporary archaeology photography.

When Vandermeulen started working for the university in 2002, he was asked to join the excavation team and implement a photography project. “As the workload was too big, I asked Danny [Veys] to join me. Although initially only intended as a professional job, it soon became a passion as we started to develop our own work, looked into archives, rediscovered earlier photographs, etc. In 2008 we started the project ‘(in)site, site-specific photography revised’,” Vandermeulen told Sunday’s Zaman during a recent interview.

Read the rest of the interview with the photographer here:s

http://bit.ly/10d9yEb

“(In) Site Sagalassos: The Archaeology of Excavation Photography” continues until June 10 at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC), located on İstiklal Caddesi, No. 181 in İstanbul’s Beyoğlu district. For more information, visit

http://rcac.ku.edu.tr

  The old neighborhood of Karaköy, next to the Galata bridge on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, is undergoing a fast gentrification as well, like all the other hoods of historic Istanbul.

I love to have breakfast in the Namli deli before I stroll again through the backstreets of this old district, that was once a prominent place of Armenian and Greek traders, businessmen, restaurants, shops and churches. I see new galleries opening, new restaurants popping up in old restored and renovated buildings, and lots of constructing going on. It will be a new hip hood very soon. So it is worth while exploring this area before all tourists do.

Travel writer Pat Yale wrote a great article on the changes going on.

Here are some parts of her story.

‘While you wait for a tram to Sultanahmet you might like to glance at the mighty Nordstern Han (currently under restoration), and Karaköy Palas, both originally built to conduct commerce at the point in time when the old residential hans of early Ottoman times began morphing into more recognizable modern business centers. More such hans are strung out along the waterside where the Kadıköy ferries dock; there’s an especially fine one designed by the same Alexandre Vallaury who was responsible for the Pera Palace Hotel immediately behind the Ziraat Bankası building — look for the splendid Arabic calligraphy over the entrance, then glance up at the French-inspired mansard roofline.

The finest of all these 19th-century buildings climb the hill towards Galata above the entrance to the Tünel funicular. Voyvoda Caddesi, better known as Bankalar Caddesi, was the Wall Street of 19th-century İstanbul, a place where all the main banks and insurance companies had their head offices. Today these have moved out to Maslak or Ataşehir and the abandoned buildings are slowly being restored to their original grandeur. To see what the interiors might have looked like head for SALT Galata, a restaurant-cum-fine-arts-library complex housed in what was once the head office first of the Ottoman Bank and then of Garanti Bankası. The basement contains a surprisingly absorbing museum of banking history.

If you walk along the waterfront beside the ferry terminal, you will come eventually to the imposing building that houses the Türk Denizyolları (Turkish Maritime Lines). Behind it runs Kemankeş Caddesi. Until recently very run-down, this is where the regeneration of Karaköy really started to take off with the opening first of the Karaköy Lokantası in the lovely turquoise-tiled building that briefly housed the Estonian Embassy and then of Lokanta Maya which injected a dose of culinary modernity into an area hitherto best known for its kuru fasuliye (baked beans).’

Read here whole article here:

http://bit.ly/17dmfoP

Recommended places to stay and to eat by Pat Yale

WHERE TO STAY

Karaköy Rooms. Tel.: 0 (212) 252 54 22

WHERE TO EAT

Bej. Tel.: 0 (212) 251 71 95

Karabatak. Tel.: 0 (212) 243 69 93

Karaköy Lokantası. Tel.: 0 (212) 292 44 55

Lokanta Maya. Tel.: 0 (212) 252 68 84

Ops. Tel.: 0 (212) 245 02 88

Ünter. Tel.: 0 (212) 244 51 51

Swimming pool at hotel Sultania

Lots of tourists want to relax in a swimming pool after a busy and tiring day of sight-seeing in Istanbul.

So which hotels are equipped with a swimming pool?

I found several in the touristic heart of Istanbul, in the district Sultanahmet with the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Hippodrome, Basilica Cistern en much more.

Here is my list of recommended hotels with a swimming pool.

Do you know any other good ones or do you want to share your experiences about them, leave your reaction here. Thanks.

Enjoy!

http://www.hotelsultania.com/

http://www.sirkecikonak.com/

http://www.neorionhotel.com/

http://orkaroyalhotel.com/

http://www.thepresidenthotel.com/

http://www.levnihotel.com/

Yoga retreat offered by Yoga Cihangir

In a busy city like Istanbul where people are stressed in life, in traffic and in the workplace many people could benefit from yoga and meditation.

The room where the lessons are given, is like an oasis of stillness where you breath, move and exercise with a a higher lever of intensity. You leave your stress behind and connect to your body in a relaxing way.

There is a wide range of traditional systems of physical exercise and meditation. Choose the one that fits you most.

Many yoga centers offer classes for beginners to well experienced practricioners of yoga. Some do offer retreats as well, and teacher training courses. One of those is Cihangir Yoga. More information on their website

http://www.cihangiryoga.com/?lang=eng

For an overview of yoga centers in Istanbul go to this site

http://www.yogafinder.com/yoga.cfm?yogacity=istanbul&yogacountry=Turkey

Some people know Istanbul from a travel agency advertisement, a website or a newspaper. Others may have seen Istanbul in a movie or saw the city featured in a documentary. Still others know the city from hearsay. Some, on the other hand, know Istanbul from the works of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. What better way, then, to visit the city and explore the various neighborhoods, streets and locations Pamuk describes in his bestselling 2009 novel “The Museum of Innocence”? This piece will allow you to do just that.

Born in Istanbul in 1952, Pamuk is the acclaimed author of 13 books, nine of which have been translated into English. His work is translated into 60 languages and in 2006 he was awarded the highest distinction in literature: the Nobel Prize in Literature. In Pamuk’s 2005 semi-autobiographical “Istanbul, Memories and the City,” he writes the following: “Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul – there are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul’s fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.”

To be precise, Pamuk was referring to Şişli’s Nişantaşı neighborhood. There, on 53 Teşvikiye Avenue (formerly number 135), almost right across from the glamorous City’s shopping mall, you will find the Pamuk Apartments. It was common in the past that large, wealthy families would live together in mansions, as did the Pamuk family. When they rented theirs to a private primary school they had an apartment complex built that survives to this day. Above the entrance it reads “Pamuk Apt.” Naming your apartment was and is a common practice in Istanbul. You won’t even have to pay close attention in the city’s residential neighborhoods to notice all apartment buildings carry a name.

Posh neighborhood

All international brands. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec

Nişantaşı is one of Istanbul’s affluent quarters; some would even call it posh. Sultan Abdülmecid I designated it in the nineteenth century. In this quarter you will find various boutiques and the flagship stores of the world’s most renowned designer labels. Located at a walking distance from the Istanbul’s famous Taksim Square, Nişantaşı makes for a nice little getaway from the hustle and bustle of Beyoğlu. Its small streets are home to a great many restaurants and bistros. It is also where you will find the splendid Teşvikiye Mosque, which looks remarkably different from many other mosques in the city. Built in during the 1850s, the mosque carries the distinct neo-baroque style that also influenced the architecture of the Ortaköy Mosque and the splendid Dolmabahçe Palace. Walking along or through Maçka Park is one of downtown Istanbul’s most scenic routes. It will take you all the way up to the aforementioned Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosporus.

In love with 18-year-old Füsun

It is in the Nişantaşı where we’ll start to retrace the novel. The year is 1975 and the book’s main character, a wealthy, 30-year-old man by the name of Kemal, walks along Vali konağı Avenue. This is the avenue that follows Cumhuriyet Avenue, which runs north from Taksim Square. Kemal is only weeks away from the engagement party preceding his marriage to a perfect match, the equally affluent and lovely Sibel. However, at a small shop on the avenue, situated all but a few meters from the Vali konağı-Rumeli Avenue intersection, Kemal falls in love with a shop girl, the then 18-year-old Füsun. Over the next couple of weeks, they continue to meet at the Merhamet Apartments. The apartment is described as overlooking Teşvikiye Avenue. However, walking along the avenue you won’t find it. The apartment building is still there, but the name has been taken off. The building is situated a little down the road from the Pamuk Apartments, just before Teşvikiye Avenue and Bostan Street meet. At the entrance of the street you will find the famous Teşvikiye police station, which shares similar architectural features as the Teşvikiye Mosque across the street. Next to the police station stands a white marble obelisk, erected on orders of Sultan Abdülmecid I to mark the quarter’s end. Take a left at that crossing and head down Ihlamur Nişantaşı Street. At the corner of Ihlamur Nişantaşı Street and Prof. Dr. Orhan Ersek Street is where Füsun and her parents, the Keskins, supposedly lived.

The street where the parents of the lover lived. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec

Engagement party in Hilton hotel

With the engagement looming, hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles, Kemal is faced with a choice of either continuing his affair with Füsun and break off the engagement, or go ahead with it. However, such is the character of Kemal that he lacks the courage to confess to Sibel that he has fallen in love with Füsun. Not only that, he also fails to truly commit himself to Füsun, who has come to love Kemal in equal measure. And so it came to pass that the engagement party went ahead, which was held at the famous Istanbul Hilton. When it opened it 1954, it was the ultimate society event of the year, in hindsight probably even of the decade. It was unique for its design in those days, and was in fact the first modern luxury hotel built in the city as well as the first Hilton hotel outside the United States. By virtue of being the first such hotel, the project developers had wonderful tracts of land to choose from. The hotel is built on an unrivaled 50.000-square meters of prime downtown property, comprising a park, a swimming pool and tennis courts. The hotel is credited for having heralded the age of American cultural influence, which redefined the so-called modern identity of the affluent Westernized Istanbulites such as the Pamuk’s and other wealthy families, who would frequent the hotel bar and patisserie.

Füsun and Kemal will dance only once, during which – drunkenly – he musters up the courage to share his true feelings for her, and he promises to be with her after the engagement party. His gesture, however, is too little too late, and she disappears from his life. Ravaged by his broken heart and unable to get over his love for this shop girl, he sees no other option than to finally confess to his fiancée all that has happened between him and Füsun. Sibel and Kemal won’t see each other again for 31 years. Kemal continues to pay his daily visits to the Merhamet Apartments in an attempt to find solace, peace and some form of redemption.

Through a friend he finally finds a way to get in touch with Füsun. By means of a letter she agrees to meet with him at her parent’s new address: Çukurcuma’s Dalgıç Street, the location of the Museum of Innocence. Dalgıç Street is a very tiny street off the beaten track. It can be a bit of a hassle to find, but the house should be easy to spot as it is entirely renovated and painted dark red. The renovation was carried out as a part of plans to actually open a Museum of Innocence. The museum was scheduled to open in 2010 to coincide with Istanbul being the European capital of Culture that year. However, for a variety of reasons the museum’s opening was delayed. In 2012, the museum finally opened its doors to the public.

Çukurcuma hood, where the Museum of Innocence is located. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec

Çukurcuma neighborhood

Çukurcuma is an interesting neighborhood, too. It is a bit run down here and there, but that rather suits the area, as it is home to a great many antique shops. For the next seven years Kemal and his chauffeur would drive down from Nişantaşı to the hills of Çukurcuma to visit Füsun and her parents, all the while hoping to get closer to her. His persistence, in the end, pays off, although Kemal’s patience will be tested to the limit, as it is only after nine years that they find themselves in each other’s arms again.

The two lovers subsequently meet at the famous Inci Patisserie to make plans for their future. Little do they know that their future is about to take an unexpected turn. In the same vein, the future of the renowned patisserie nowadays hangs in the balance as its fortunes rest on a court’s decision in its attempt to fend off the onslaught of modernity. Opened in 1944, Inci introduced Istanbul to the profiterole, which has become a favorite dessert among Istanbulites since. Very little has changed in the store since it opened in the 1940s. It is housed in one of Istiklal Avenue’s many grand old buildings, which in recent years have been renovated one by one. The 136-year-old building is a design by Alexandre Vallaury, the famous French-Ottoman architect who is also responsible for the Pera Palace Hotel and the headquarters of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. Many locals fear that the building, which over the years has become increasingly dilapidated, will suffer the same fate as the equally grand building next to it; gutted, renovated and turned into a shopping mall (the Demirören Mall). Its pristine white exterior facings make it look more like a prop from a movie set as opposed a building with a proud history.

Most of the shops neighboring Inci have had to vacate the building as it, too, is scheduled for the shopping mall treatment. Inci, however, is not going down without a fight and resists the decision in court. The legendary 1924 Emek Cinema, for many years the best-loved place to watch movies Istanbul, unfortunately, did not survive. It had to close its doors in 2010. It is in the Emek Cinema that Kemal and Füsun would go and see movies during their idle years. The Atlas Cinema is another location frequented by the book’s main characters. Luckily, this cinema has survived. So, too, has the Fitaş Palace Cinema, although it has lost most of its former glory.

Museum of Innocence visitor with the novel. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec

The Museum of Innocence

I will not disclose how the story ends, for it would be too much of a spoiler of a book that deserves to be read. The Museum of Innocence has been compared by critics to classics such as Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” and Lev Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” and who am I to disagree with that? The book is as enjoyable to read as the various present-day locations are interesting. What is all the more convenient is that the book contains a small map, detailing the exact location of the Museum of Innocence. Hence, with the book in hand you may find it. Locating the street and the house may not be easy, but finding it is as rewarding as finishing the book’s 83(!) chapters. Furthermore, bringing along the book will get you into the museum for free, as each novel contains a ticket to the museum. It is a place where reality and fiction meet in unexpected ways.

 In Istanbul’s old town, with all the touristic high lights, many public restrooms are not in a good condition. Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş has promised to renovate existing facilities, including those in mosques, and construct new, modern ones.

“There are often questions surrounding the cleanliness of public restrooms, so the municipality will initiate a project to convert public toilets into modern ones, especially in touristic areas. The municipal workers assigned to deal with public facilities will be maintaining the toilets’ cleanness.”

The municipality plans to renovate 25 public restrooms and construct 15 new ones in touristic places in Istanbul.

One of the recently built new and clean modern toilets is on the Hippodrome across the Neo-Byzantine German Fountain that was constructed to commemorate the second anniversary of German Emperor Wilhelm II’s visit to Istanbul in 1898. The toilets are clean, cost 1 Turkish Lira to enter and come in two styles: a western sitting model and a Turkish squat model.

Squat toilet. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec

Rest rooms in mosques are all squat toilets, also known as a toilet alaturka. These kinds of toilets are also commonly used in Asian countries and France. The toilet is used by squatting, rather than sitting. It is basically just a hole in the ground. Put your feet on foot rests, facing the entrance to the cubicle. Beware that there is no toilet paper available, only a plastic watering can. After washing your hands you can take some paper at the counter where you pay – 75 or 1 Turkish Lira – to dry them.