Hello!
To give you a reference, here is where we began our trip Sunday (blue dot):
To give you a reference, here is where we began our trip Sunday (blue dot):
Istanbul is a city of 15 million people! It is actually on two continents, Europe and Asia. We spent our time Sunday and Monday on the Europe side of Istanbul.
The blue dot (below) is where our hotel was for the first night. We spent our first three hours, right after getting off the plane, in the ancient city of Constantinople on the "Golden Horn" peninsula (in the green area below the blue dot). This section within the modern city of Istanbul still has the old city walls.
Our first visit was right after we got off the plane, and it was to a museum of the church-mosque. First called the Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom), it was first consecrated a church in 537 A.D. in the Byzantine empire, then ransacked in 1204 by the soldiers of the 4th christian crusades, and then conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman empire and converted into a mosque. It was declared a museum in 1935 by the Turkish government.
Inside the Hagia Sophia....
The center dome with arabic caligraphy....
On the second level, a remnant of a wall mosaic from the Byzantine era of Jesus (center) with Mary (left) and John the baptizer (right)...
Here is a preserved Byzantine mosaic of Jesus Christ:
These mosaics were never destroyed when the Sophia was converted into a mosque.
On the bus ride to our hotel for the first night, you can see the continent of Asia is across the water in this picture.
more coming...
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