I’ve long appreciated cemeteries. As a teenager I spent a lot of time pondering over the lives of the many people buried in the Gore Hill Cemetery in St Leonards, Sydney, where I grew up. Even aged 14 I thought it ironic that rooms in the adjacent hospital overlooked the graves. Gore Hill was established…
I’m neither a mad dog nor an Englishman and I never go out in the midday sun in summer, but this year the temperature in Istanbul from June through to August was set on high no matter the time of day. Nonetheless I still went out exploring, but tried to plan outings involving air-conditioned transport…
On a clear sunny winter’s day in Istanbul I paid a visit to the Yahya Efendi tomb, located halfway up a really steep hill in Besiktas. Born in Trabzon in 1495, Yahya Efendi was a famous scholar of the 16th century. His year of birth coincided with that of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman, whose mother also…
I’m a Leo so I usually go large on birthdays with celebrations lasting at least a week and sometimes as long as a month. In the past I’ve enjoyed dinner with all my friends at a nice restaurant, held a party at home or had a romantic dinner with my lovely husband in a beachside…
Just before the December rains set in I took advantage of Istanbul’s blue sunny skies to go exploring. My aim was to find works by Raimondo D’Aronco, an Italian architect responsible for bringing Art Nouveau architecture to the city. Raimondo D’Aronco was born in Gemona del Friuli (by coincidence part of the district where my…
I love Islamic architecture and have been in more mosques than I can count. However after travelling in Istanbul and Turkey for a month with my Dad, in 2007, I was mosqued out. Dad was fascinated by them and big or small, famous or completely unknown, he wanted to see inside every one we passed….
When the original wooden St Stephen Church Istanbul was erected on the shores of the Golden Horn in the early 19th century, the Bulgarian Church was trying to break away from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul. At that time the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople controlled all the religious affairs of Orthodox congregations throughout the entire…
Another of the Dervish tombs I love is in a suburb called Merdivenköy, also on the Asian side of Istanbul. Today this is a heavily built up residential area but the suffix köy, meaning village, points to its history. During the reign of the Ottoman sultans the palace was supplied with milk, cheese and yoghurt…
One the quirky features I love about Istanbul are tombs dedicated to dede or senior dervishes that turn up in the most unusual places. A dervish is a member of a Muslim religious order who has taken vows of poverty and austerity. Most often associated with the Sufi religious order, there are various orders of…
At least once a month I set off to explore Istanbul’s lesser known streets and sights. Armed with a vague plan to see at least one specific place, I often come across unexpected delights. The day I headed to Nısancı Mahallesi with my husband and two friends, was no exception. This time I discovered an…