Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [1]
—JASON GOODWIN,
in the foreword to
Istanbul: Poetry of Place
INTRODUCTION
Istanbul [is] like any great Imperial city a melting pot of cultures, a homing ground for disparate peoples, a Tower of Babel. Here Asia, the Transcaucasus, and the Balkans meet, Tartary and Arabia converge, Black Sea and Mediterranean types gather, Muslim, Christian, and Jew pray, ancient and modern counterpoint.
—Ateş Orga,
Istanbul: Poetry of Place
THIS IS an exciting moment in history to visit Istanbul. The United Nations has designated no fewer than nine World Heritage sites in Turkey, and the European Union has chosen Istanbul to be a European Capital of Culture for 2010. If you feel you may have an image of the city that is dusty and medieval, you probably do, and it’s outdated: an August 2005 cover story of Newsweek proclaimed Istanbul “The Coolest City in the World”; Tyler Brûlé, founder of Wallpaper, was quoted in the May 2006 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller saying that “Istanbul is the new black. It’s the new Barcelona and Turkey is now the emerging hot spot for edgy food, cool design, and early adopters of premium tourism that Spain was ten years ago”; Suzy Menkes, writing in The International Herald Tribune in December 2006, noted that “Istanbul, straddling East and West across the Bosphorus, is on the cusp of change”; and three-Michelin-star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened an outpost of his Spice Market restaurant in Istanbul in 2008 in the swank new W Hotel. The Wallpaper City Guide to Istanbul enthuses that “some cities continue into the twenty-first century only as museum pieces or tourist traps—and in Istanbul, the impressively numerous sights and still more numerous carpet salesrooms fulfill both functions in one easily navigable crux—but Istanbul is a monster metropolis that never stands still (and that’s not a coded reference to its seismic activity).”
On the other hand, those who think that modern Turkey has become too much like anywhere else are simply mistaken. Things are different in Turkey, as writer Anthony Weller noted in European Travel & Life: “Istanbul, which straddles the border between Europe and Asia, is schizophrenic; it cannot make up its many minds about anything. It is either the last noisy city in Europe or the first quiet town in Asia.”
I admit that one of the reasons I initially wanted to visit Istanbul was due to my affection for that silly song, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” written by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon and originally recorded by The Four Lads in 1953 for Columbia. (The fact that They Might Be Giants made it a hit again in 1990 was all the proof I needed that the song is catchy and endearing.) Some years later, I learned of an earlier song, “C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E,” recorded by Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby in 1928, which is even sillier. But I love them both, and for many years I couldn’t imagine a more exotic city on earth.
Philip Mansel, in Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, relates that few people consistently used one name for the city. Other names, spellings, epithets, and abbreviations have included Istanbul, Islambol, Stambul, Estambol, Kushta, Cons/ple, Gosdantnubolis, Tsarigrad, Rumiyya al-kubra, New Rome, New Jerusalem, the City of Pilgrimage, the City of Saints, the House of the Caliphate, the Throne of the Sultanate, the House of State, the Gate of Happiness, the Eye of the World, the Refuge of the Universe, Polis, and—simply—the City. It isn’t difficult to find adjectives to describe Istanbul’s beauty, uniqueness, and spirit.
Harder to describe