Product Description
Istanbul is a unique city. For more than one thousand five hundred years, it served as the capital of two great empires. Its walls, among the most impressive defensive systems of the Middle Ages, protected first the capital of Byzantium and then that of the Ottoman Empire.
The Walls of Istanbul are also one of the world’s greatest historical and cultural heritages; at the same time, they are witnesses that have become intertwined with the lives of Istanbul’s residents, shaped the city, and bear the traces of everyday life spanning thousands of years.
In The Walls and Gates of Istanbul, Murat Belge will approach the walls as a cultural route and guide us along it. Along the way, stopping at the wall gates, we will explore the land walls from Yedikule to the Golden Horn, then the neighborhoods along the Golden Horn, and afterward the Historic Peninsula along the Marmara Walls, beginning at Sarayburnu. We will then cross to Karaköy and walk through Galata, Istanbul’s westward-looking face, tracing the remains of the old Genoese walls and gates.
When we reach the end of our journey, in which we discover not only the walls but also the neighborhoods, people, monuments, places of worship of every faith, and the legends and stories accompanying them, we will have completed a cultural tour of Istanbul.
As you join this tour, where we will witness our city’s rich history and culture and its vibrant, many-colored fabric, you will fall in love with Istanbul once again and look with different eyes at the riches we pass by every day and live among.