Last night, the 7 of us went to visit the Blue Mosque and unsuccessfully tried to do similarly with the Ayasofya and Topkapi Palace (they were closed). Today we tried again with the latter two, this time with positive results. Pictures to come, when I finally post this.
Blue Mosque
Walking from the tram station to our hostel, you pass two major mosques on either side of you. One is the Ayasofya -- more on that below. The other is the Blue Mosque, aka the Sultanahmet Mosque. Following Islamic practice, we had to remove our shoes before entering and make sure we weren't wearing shorts, and the ladies had to don headscarves while inside.
(Last picture was in the morning several days later)
Topkapi Palace
This was the palace of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years and kind of reminds me of a smaller but greener Forbidden City. Lots of individual buildings, separated by spacious courtyards. Within lots of the buildings are displays of artifacts -- clothes, weapons, jewelry, everyday and not-so-everyday objects, etc. -- that puts the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha to shame, as nice as the latter is. Unfortunately, we were forbidden from taking pictures of the displays: one guy who tried otherwise was loudly ratted out by some other angry fat visitor in a red shirt.
Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia)
Probably my favorite of our big three tourist stops. Originally an Orthodox/Catholic cathedral, the Ottomans converted it into a mosque when they took control of the city. Looking inside, there's a really strange mixture of the two worlds. The building is this giant work of Byzantine architecture with half-remaining Christian-themed mosaics all over the walls, but it's superimposed with Ottoman decorations and circular plates of Arabic calligraphy reading "Muhammed," "Ali," etc. Some major restoration work was underway when we visited, but there was lots of interesting and beautiful stuff to see inside.
Greay pics my friend.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing...