Off we went to Istanbul. Even though we hadn’t thought about it when booking, it was strangely fitting. Located on the Bosporus, a city on two continents—Europe and Asia. I had high expectations of Istanbul, and it did not disappoint. “If the world were a nation, Istanbul would be its capital,” Napoleon once said. For historians, it’s the crème de la crème. A city of Eastern Romans with the idea of becoming the new Rome, aqueducts, cisterns, churches, and the historic Hagia Sophia. At least it used to be a church. Until the Ottomans took the city and turned it into a mosque and built Ottoman palaces and so on and so forth. Under Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, Hagia Sophia became a museum. And then later a mosque again, then a museum again, and in 2020 a mosque again. Living history, in other words. And now we’re finally heading home, so we can report back in person. See you soon, my dears.
Istanbul Gallery
