Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [116]
Jane Taylor, in Imperial Istanbul, says it is “one of the most superbly planned and displayed museums in Turkey,” and the palace’s great hall she describes as a “magnificent room, far grander than any at Topkapı Sarayı.” Taylor also relates that Ibrahim Pasha (first grand vizier to Süleyman the Magnificent) once told an Austrian ambassador, “Although I am the Sultan’s slave, whatsoever I want done is done.… I can give kingdoms and provinces to anyone I like, and my master will say nothing to stop me. Even if he has ordered something, if I do not want it to happen, it is not done; and if I command that something should be done, and he happens to have commanded the contrary, my wishes and not his are obeyed.” (Except, apparently, the Sultan’s wish that he should be strangled.) The museum also features an interior of a well-off Bursa household of the nineteenth century as well as a twentieth-century Istanbul mansion.
Little Aya Sofya, or Church of the Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is a little gem, south of the Hippodrome and separated from the Sea of Marmara by a railway line and the coastal road. It was begun by Justinian in 527 and, according to John Freely, the story goes that during the reign of his uncle Justin I, an old soldier, Justinian had been accused of plotting against the throne and had been sentenced to death. But Saints Sergius and Bacchus appeared to the emperor in a dream and told him that his nephew was innocent. The next morning Justin ordered that Justinian be freed, and Justinian thereupon vowed that he would show his gratitude to the saints by building a church dedicated to them. When he succeeded to the throne he did just that. Sergius and Bacchus were two Roman soldiers who’d been martyred for their faith and who later became the patron saints of Christians in the Roman army.
The church very much resembles Aya Sofya, and in fact Freely writes that “it thus belongs to that extraordinary period of prolific and fruitful experiment in architectural forms that produced, in Constantinople, buildings so ambitious and so different as the present church, Haghia Sophia itself, and Haghia Eirene—to name only the surviving monuments—and in Ravenna, St. Vitale, the Baptistery, and St. Apollinare in Classe. It is as if the architects were searching for new modes of expression suitable to a new age.” The church became a mosque during the reign of Beyazit II from 1506 to 1513. In 2006, after an extensive restoration resulting from a UNESCO designation as an endangered monument, the mosque reopened to the public and to prayer.
The Pera Museum, in Beyoğlu (Meşrutiyet Caddesi 141 / 212 334 9900 / peramuzesi.org.tr), opened in 2005 and is a don’t miss on your itinerary! The museum is beautifully installed in a historic building that dates from 1893 and was until recently the Bristol Hotel. The permanent collection includes Portraits from the Empire: The Ottoman World and the Ottomans from the 18th to 20th Century, which belong to the Suna and İnan Kiraç Foundation, patrons of the museum. The Anatolian Weights and Measures collection is on a different floor and is truly fascinating, as is the collection of Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics. The Kiraç Foundation’s Orientalist Painting collection consists of more than thirty paintings, including the famous work (and my favorite) by Osman Hamdi The Tortoise Trainer. (Remember all those turtles walking around the Topkapı grounds with lit candles on their backs?) The Pera is not a large museum, perfect for an hour or