Imagine the time – almost 25 years ago. Imagine the place – Istanbul, Eminönü and the old Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn. Fishermen in Karaköy, the new Galata bridge in the background “Up on the terrace of the hostel, the six of us ploughed our way through three bottles of reasonable red wine and…
For my first Turkish Ramazan I was living in Istanbul. It was November 2000 and I was living in Erenköy, a leafy suburb on the Asian side of the city. At that time there were no natural gas connections so the air was thick with coal smoke from apartment heating systems, darkness fell around 5pm…
Although now part of the hustle and bustle of the greater city of Istanbul, once upon a time Eyup was a sleepy backwater, a small village famous for containing the final resting place of Eyup (Job) Ansari, standard bearer to the Prophet Muhammed. For this reason Eyup is considered the third holiest site after Mecca…
The idea for the Orhan Pamuk Museum of Innocence in Istanbul was based on his novel of the same name, and was conceived at the same time as the idea for the book. They simultaneously came into thought in the 1990s, and the novel was published in 2008 while the museum opened later, in 2012….