The Istanbul Archaeological Museums in Istanbul, Turkey

*WS 140: the Istanbul Archaeological Museums in Istanbul, Turkey*

The Istanbul Archaeological Museums is a group of 3 museums located next to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The original archaeological museum was founded as an imperial museum in 1891. There are over a million items collected in this museum, including a large collection of Turkish, Hellenistic and Roman artefacts gathered from the vast Ottoman Empire. We visited this museum twice, in 2001 on a “hurrying” group tour and 2017 on our own easy-n-lazy schedule. The photos are of course from the 2017 visit.  

The 1st photo shows the main neoclassical building completed in 1908. The 2nd shows artefacts in the courtyard. The most famous artefacts are a group of 4 sarcophagi from the necropolis of Sidon, a city in present-day Lebanon, dating to the late 4th century BC. The 3rd and 4th photos are images of the most prized possession here: the Alexander Sarcophagus, the stone coffin for Alexander the Great, with the bas-relief carving depicting him (on the far left) slaying the Persians. Another contemporary sarcophagus is the Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, with aesthetic carving, 5th photo. 

The 6th photo shows the glazed brick panel taken from the way to the Ishtar, the 8th gate in the inner city of Babylon (in present day Iraq), dated to 575 BC. The 7th shows the double sphinx sculpture found in west Turkey, dated to the 9th century BC. Please note that the figure in the middle is too young to be a museum piece. 

The 8th photo shows the famous exhibit from the Museum of Ancient Orient: the limestone statue of Lugal-Dalu, the King of Adab in central Iraq dated to around 2,500 BC.  The last 2 photos show the exhibits from the Museum of Islamic Art, highlighting the use of the famous ceramic tiles produced in the town of Iznik (140 km south of Istanbul) in Turkey during the Middle Ages.

The majestic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey

*WS 132: The majestic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey*

After covering the Suleymaniye Mosque, I feel compelled to introduce the Hagia Sophia whose glamour the Mosque was built to compete.

Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom”) is the Christian cathedral built in 532 -537 AD in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. 

It was the world's largest building and an engineering marvel of its time. It remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until the Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.

In 1453, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and soon the cathedral was turned into a mosque. In 1935 the 1st President of the modern Republic of Turkey, M K Ataturk, transformed it into a museum and it remained so until today. 

The Hagia Sophia is of masonry construction with a first floor gallery. The central dome is 55.6 m from floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. The windows provide ample light to the interior and reduce the weight too. It is slightly elliptical, with the diameter near 31 m. There are other half domes of identical diameter to the central dome. Interior surfaces are sheathed with marbles, green and white with purple porphyry, and gold mosaics. The exterior, clad in stucco, was tinted yellow and red during restorations in the 19th century. 

The design of the great dome at the Hagia Sophia has been copied by many churches later and even the mosques of the Ottoman Empire. 

The first 2 photos show the exterior. The minarets were Ottoman additions. The next 4 the interior with the domes and half domes. 

The 7th photo shows one of the many chandeliers. The 8th photo shows a part on the floor below the main dome called the “Omphalion” made up of 32 pieces of marble in different sizes. It was where the Byzantine emperors were crowned. The 9th and 10th photos show the famous mosaic pieces, dating to the 9th and 10th centuries respectively. The one at the apse showcase the 4 m high Virgin Mary with Jesus, and the one at the south-western entrance with Virgin Mary, Emperor Constantine and Emperor Justinian I.

The beautiful Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey

*WS 131: the beautiful Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey*

We were in Istanbul, Turkey on a free-n-easy trip for 5 days in 2012. We visited quite a few big mosques, and the most beautiful to us is this Suleymaniye Mosque, not the more famous Blue Mosque. This is a mosque built by Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman Empire in 1557 and named after him. His intention was to build a mosque comparable in standing to the Christian cathedral Hagia Sophia built over a thousand years earlier. 

Like in all royal mosques there is a central courtyard with 4 minarets at the corners, each 74 m tall. The courtyard has a colonnaded peristyle (veranda) with granite and marble columns. The interior is almost a square, 59 m by 58 m, forming a single vast space.  The main dome is 53 m high and a diameter of 26.5 m or half the height, based on the design of the dome in the Hagia Sophia. There are many more smaller domes and half domes. 

The interior is simply beautiful with a giant chandelier hanging below the main dome. It is well decorated with stained glasses and Iznik tiles which are special ceramic titles produced in Iznik in Turkey during the Middle Ages. The 7th photo shows a decoration while the 8th the mihrab, a niche in the wall indicating the direction of Mecca.