Byzantine Empire

Prior to the Ottomans Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Byzantine empire that became all that remained of the Roman empire once Rome itself had fallen to the northern 'barbarians'. At its peak in 550 CE the Byzantine empire extended from Italy through, Albania, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria to Constantinople and down the eastern Mediterranean right across the top of North Africa through Egypt to Tunisia and across to southern Spain. Istanbul still has many Roman ruins and some Roman constructions, like the central water cistern, are virtually intact.

The Chief amongst these is Hagia Sophia, the oldest Christian cathedral in the world, built at the height of the empire between 532 and 537. It stands on the site of several preceding churches the first having been ordered by Constantine the great, the founder of Roman Christianity.

In 1453 it became a mosque but ten years after the establishment of the Republic, in 1934, it was secularised and became a museum. The Christian mosaics previously covered out of Islamic piety have been exposed so that we can see the Byzantine Emperor and his queen claiming temporal authority by their juxtaposition with the Virgin and Christ child. Notice that the language is Greek, Latin having lost favour in the Eastern Empire.

Again, below, with Jesus. Earlier figurative mosaics were destroyed during the iconoclastic controversy at the turn of the eighth century when fundamentalist Christians opposed images in places of worship and destroyed them. I have discussed this in more detail elsewhere, see footnote [4] in Egypt, Syria and Jordan . The present mosaics are from the post-iconoclastic period.

The building itself is a masterpiece of intuitive engineering and construction and it was, for over a thousand years, the largest cathedral in the world. It has stood through earthquake and tempest for nearly seventeen hundred years so far. While smaller than the Pantheon the central dome averages 31 metres in diameter, only a fraction smaller than St Paul’s in London.

It is the template for the vast Blue (Sultan Ahmed) Mosque that stands nearby and for thousands of other mosques worldwide. Thus one religion builds on another.

Istanbul boasts a ferry service similar to that in Sydney. The ferries are somewhat older rather like those that plied Sydney Harbour in the sixties’. But the routes are longer; the ferries are more numerous and they are a lot less expensive. The café on board serves Nescafé and black tea that you can stand a spoon in. They are a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours on a sunny autumn day; particularly when you have got on to the wrong ferry and find yourself in Asia when you should be in Europe. I am sure they were a lot more fun than the Turkish bath that we missed as a result of getting lost.

As mentioned above we hired a car to go to Gallipoli. It was a Fiat and quite roadworthy; once we pumped up its flat tire. Driving in Turkey can only be described as interesting. There don’t seem to be any road rules at all and much of it is a game of bluff. Drivers jump queues by going around; over the footpath or through parks; or on the other side of the road if it is not in use.

Once we had negotiated the Istanbul traffic we were on the open road much of which was dual carriageway; after a fashion. Quite often the carriageway was temporary as there were extensive roadworks. An amusing feature here is that often the new carriageway is half a metre to metre higher than the one adjacent, with no barrier along the drop, so that drifting over to the side can be fatal. As we drove along we saw an accident where this very thing had happened; spectacular crash but no burn. If you are doing less than 120 kilometres an hour you’ll be pushed over by the by the cars and trucks overtaking you. Needless to say this rarely happened to us.

When we got back I was so accustomed to Turkish driving that I successfully grabbed the only parking spot in the street in less than 15 seconds of a car leaving and ahead of several other aspirants. The man from the carpet shop told Wendy ‘he drives just like a local’. I took it as a compliment. Of course it wasn’t my car.