The schizophrenic old man of Europe

the seventeenth century), and much more: a city profile

by Travel Editor

Raymond Gardner.

IT IS difficult to imagine a city more perplexing to the European

traveller; a city where you are at once at home and entirely abroad, a

city which bridges Europe and the Orient. (Oddly enough the old city on

the European side has much more of the mystic Orient about it than the

suburban high rise on the Asian shore.) There are buildings of stone

with stunning though faded deco frontages; tenements of sun-dried

brittle wood, sometimes painted, sometimes not; there are venerable

dowager grand hotels where the likes of Agatha Christie slept, awaiting

the real Orient Express. Here was the edge of town once, a pastoral view

from her balcony, whilst today we sit on the edge of a foul highway.

Elsewhere the comforts which late twentieth-century man humps

everywhere are to be seen sprouting, as though at random -- building

control is not a major factor here -- a Hilton, a Swissotel, a Conrad.

These sit, for the most part, on curved and hilly avenues away from the

city proper. But walk down that hill and you are thrust into the

helter-skelter of a world where continents divide and collide.

Istanbul! They didn't like the red light district here so in 1875

French engineers built the first and shortest subway in the world slap

bang beneath it so that folk of good morals could get from the new

business centre to the ferries and the famed Galata Bridge. But history

is awash: chunks of this famous twin-decked floating structure eddy in

the sluggish tides after last year's curious incident when a ferry, cast

adrift, sank most of it. The new bridge has been damaged also, its eight

lanes narrowing to four in the middle. In a city of intrigue no-one can

quite explain what happened, or what is happening.

They are trying to build highways and motorways all over the place,

and have little mind for ancient monuments. But in the end the new

bridge leads pretty well nowhere but to the quays where floating

kitchens (bobbing rowing boats complete with charcoal braziers) still

flog their fresh fried fish parcels to the hungry outside the ubiquitous

McDonald's from which you get an outstanding view of the old city, its

minarets, and the New Mosque, which is only 400 years old.

Such contradictions abound. The Blue Mosque is hardly blue at all,

although the Grand Bazaar seems real enough until you are told that

until not so long ago the wardrobe-sized shops and alleys were populated

only by rats, used as pissoirs by all and sundry. Outside, on the steep

slopes of the ancient merchant city, gaunt men walk permanently doubled

beneath the weight of vast harnesses, bales of God knows what being

humped from lorry to warehouse to God knows where.

In truth, the curling streets of the merchant quarter are somewhat

more interesting than the tourist net and the new-found splendour of

that Grand Bazaar. You can buy every known designer label here -- from

Gucci to 501s -- for immediate attaching to your fake designer gear;

wholesale only, of course. You can buy a mighty fine blouson jacket, in

calfskin suede, for #80, and see the same garment sporting a finer label

in Glasgow's Buchanan Street at five times the price. Someone takes a

hefty whack and you know it is not the workers in the Istanbul sweat

shop, or those in the label-makers wynd.

THE Old City! Byzantium is Constantinople is Istanbul, and in terms of

ancient monuments I can think of no place on earth which lives up to the

promise of its history better than this relatively small area bounded on

two sides by water -- the Sea of Marmara as it meets the Bosphorus, and

the less than Golden Horn -- and the city walls, breached in anger only

twice since they were built in the fourth century, which link the water

defences.

In the Old City everything is to hand, the Great Palace of Topkapi

leads to the Sancta Sophia and so to the Hippodrome, Blue Mosque and the

cistern which leads you to the museum area and then downhill through the

Grand Bazaar to the Egyptian Market. You can spend a full day in the

Topkapi Palace (closed Tuesdays) alone, and remember that the harem is

only open between 10 am and 6 pm.

The sheer grandeur of the palace, actually a city within a city which

housed 5000 people -- as many as 500 in the harem -- could almost make

first sight of the Topkapi Diamond and the 86-carat Spoonmaker's Diamond

something of an anti-climax. This is not the case, even if one did

wonder how, within their bomb-proof glass safes, the jewels managed to

get quite the patina of dust they have.

THE NEW CITY! The area of Beyoglu, through Pera, and up to Taksim

Square is hardly that new, but it is where the European powers decided

to sit and wait on the end of the sick man of Europe. Obstinately, the

last of the sultans -- from the mid-nineteenth century -- upped their

Ottoman decadence and moved lock, stock and minaret to Pera and the

Bosphorus.

The foreign powers did their waiting in some comfort, building grand

ambassadorial buildings in the architectural style of their own nation

along or near the principal street known as Istiklal Caddesi. The

British contribution was built in 1845 by Sir Charles Barry, the

architect of the Houses of Parliament. The buildings still stand, even

if some of the powers which erected them do not, and since the street

has been pedestrianised an ancient single-decker tram ambles up and down

between Taksim Square and the Tunel.

All human life is here and around -- though rather too much of it

perhaps if you wander down some of the narrow alleys after nightfall.

Down the Cicek Pasaji (Flower Passage) is a baroque arcade lined with

open-fronted restaurants and beyond it the fish and flower market. The

fifteenth-century Galatsaray Hamami is nearby, still in business for as

real a Turkish bath as you could wish.

BEYOND the Tunel stands the fourteenth-century Galata Tower, famed for

its views across the city and the Bosphorus and infamous for its

restaurant and floor show. I found its coffee more than acceptable and

was pleased to see that its twentieth-century lift was backed up by the

kind of generator they use for street drilling machines. On the basis

that in Istanbul if it can move it can be nicked, this example had been

half-cemented to the wall. Reassuring, nevertheless, in a city noted for

its power cuts.

Not that this bothered a chap called Celebi, who made the world's

first recorded hang-glider flight across the Bosphorus from the

200ft-high platform. That was back in the early seventeenth century and

he got exiled by the sultan for his pains. Today you can enjoy the

nightly delights of a belly dancer whose muscular gyrations are in no

doubt, even if the description of her as the boneless fish may leave you

feeling a mite chaste.

Nearby stands the Neve Shalom Synagogue, one of many, which comes as

something of a surprise in a city and nation once ruled by Islamic holy

law. But it has always been so; even before the Ottomans made refuge for

the Sephardic Jews fleeing from Spain the sultan's hekimbasi (physician)

was always a Jewish subject.

Accustomed as we have become to Islamic fundamentalism it may well

take a visit to modern Turkey, since Ataturk a secular Islamic state, to

recall amidst the synagogues and churches that the Muslim way recognises

the traditions of Judaism and the Old Testament prophets; with Jesus

they are considered moral leaders who came before Muhammed.

Not that all was ever sweetness and light: indeed the Ottoman way

included some rather nasty habits (eunuchs notwithstanding) like the

demise of all possible rivals after each accession, even if this meant

your 19 brothers. Mehmet III managed this feat by strangulation in 1595.

SAILING TO Byzantium? With all that water around it is good to know

that going up and doon the watter is a distinctly recommended

possibility in this part of the world. Indeed, a good two days can be

spent so doing and it gives the ancient monumental feet a goodly rest.

The ancient steamers in mottled (ie. rusty) white positively gush up

and down the Bosphorus from pier to pier, seemingly racing to be first,

arriving all at once, and standing off in a cacophany of horns and

bugles. How they never collide Muhammed only knows; they most certainly

and most frequently collide with the piers.

The most gentle of ferry trips is the

two-hour journey from the terminal by the Galata Bridge at the

entrance to the Golden Horn out across the Bosphorus and into the

Marmara Sea. Your destination is one of the Princess Islands, truly

isles of serenity yet part of a city whose population may be three times

its official one of seven million.

Motor traffic is banned on the islands, hence the peace. You journey

by graceful two-horse power phaetons and in a city renowned for its muck

will be astonished to discover a leather potty strategically placed

behind each pair of tails. Trotsky spent some of his exile on the

furthest island, Buyukada, verdant, lush, surrounded by sandy beaches

and exhibiting some splendid nineteenth-century wooden houses. You could

take lunch here and hop a passing ferry, stopping for coffee on the

elegant promenade of Heybeliada. If you take a late ferry back the thing

will lurch alarmingly from pier to pier as seemingly impossible numbers

throng on board. They still jump from the quay on to the last ferry

here; at the best of times there is no gangway in any case.

A passage along the Bosphorus is no less emotional, especially for

those brought up on Waverley waves. Jason and the Argonauts nipped along

this way to recover the Golden Fleece, but I much prefer the tale of Io,

who was having a few golden moments with Zeus when his wife bequeathed

his mistress a plague of gnats. To escape, Io became a cow and swam the

waterway and thus the mighty Bosphorus translates rather mundanely, as

the Ford of the Cow.

There is nothing mundane about your passage past Ortakoy, with its

delicate mosque dwarfed but not humbled by the mighty span of the first

Bosphorus bridge. On the Asian side the bridge almost vanishes into the

Beylerbeyi Palace. Piers come and go, on most of them a wood and wrought

iron pier-master's office. And between the piers and the villages stand

the sleek yachts at the bottom of the gardens of the villas of the

seriously rich Istanbulites. Bit like the Clyde, come to think of it.

* Factfile: Scheduled flights BA and Turkish Airlines from London

(around four hours). For the first time this year (April 12-October 25)

you can fly direct to Istanbul from Glasgow. Specialist operator

President Holidays can offer a two-centre holiday (7 days Istanbul/7

days N. Cyprus) from #485. #510 in restored Ottoman city mansion, #779

at the Conrad. All year round it offers 20 hotels in Istanbul with

flight charters ex-London on Istanbul Airways or Aer Lingus subsiduary

Pegasus. Seven nights b & b, May, restored Ottoman timber house, #376.

Conrad #580. Bargain offer ex-London until March 13: three nights #165,

seven nights #207. For brochure: President Holidays, 542 Kingsland Road,

Dalston, London E8 4AH. Tel: 071 249 4002. Time: GMT + 2 hrs. Best

weather: May/June, Sept/Oct. Currency: #1 = 12,500 Turkish lira approx.

Immigration: Turkey charges #5 sterling (no travellers cheques, no

coins) when your passport is stamped. Customs: duty free available on

landing. Food: see The European Palate on Page 10; Trencherman will also

report soon.