Being Amongst the Last Ghost of Justinian

August 3, 2010


We got off to a late start in the morning.

Today was the last day that the other three were going to be in Istanbul. They were to ride a bus back to Varna that night and then catch flights back to the States right afterwards in the early morning. Therefore, once again, there was a limited amount of time to see as much as possible. And, once again, because of my wealth of knowledge about the sites, I was willfully elected to be the English tour guide.

... I actually volunteered. They did not have to twist my arm at all.

I had absolutely no qualms doing that because there were still some things to see that I did not get the chance to visit the day before. The Hagia Sophia and the nearby Mosaic Museum, in particular, are not open on Monday's. However, the Basilica Cisterns were closed on Tuesday's, which was a bit of a let down because the remaining three were going to leave Istanbul without seeing one of the most remarkable Byzantine sites. The upside was that, in all, the Hagia Sophia in itself is more than worth a trip to Istanbul.

As usual, the breakfast was remarkable. In the late morning I put on my travel backpack and set off for my new hotel where I was going to stay for the rest of the week. As I walked down to the Golden Horn from where I was in Taksim I began to think to myself that it was a little more humid than I had anticipated. Regardless, I did not stop. Even for water. I walked down Atıf Yılmaz Caddesi and took a left onto Tarlabaşı Bulvarı. After a short time I walked under an overpass, which surfaced again at the entrance to the Atatürk Bridge. Along the bridge I captured some greetings from the locals who were fishing off the sides. I am pretty sure I would not want to eat the seafood that comes out of the Golden Horn. Though, it certainly does look ‘Palaeologian-fresh’.

The sidewalks were occasionally non-existent so it became a little dangerous every so often when I had to dash across traffic with my thirty-pound pack shaking my balance all over creation. The heat was tolerable, but it was the humidity that was sneaky. It was not unbearable, but it became noticeable within a matter of minutes when my shirt was inexplicably, shockingly, soaking wet. As soon as I reached the Aqueduct of Valens I was beyond repair. I did not even want to think about my pack that was sticking against my back.

Gnarly.


The Valens Aqueduct

According to Google Maps, the trek should have taken me around one hour. It took me about an hour and twenty minutes because I was severely lost after I passed under the Valens Aqueduct. Of course, as usual, I was abiding by my trusty Constantinople memory map – aided by my memorization of left and right hand turns provided by a glance at Google Maps earlier that morning. As it turns out, alleyways and tiny streets all look about the same size on Google Maps. In reality, these alleyways and tiny streets are easily neglected and looked over. I thought I was bulletproof with my directions. I am the son of a navigator. Therefore I should be able to do this with ease.

Knowing that I was in the right location and relatively close to my destination, I walked into a hotel, looking as if I had been backpacking for months with no rest, all uphill, in the Sun, and asked for assistance. I was pointed in a direction and I went for it.

Moments later I was rudely reminded of the twisted, warped, contorted corn maze that is the modern city’s layout. Within a matter of minutes I was turned around and hopeless. As lost as a puppy, I entered another hotel. This time a guy steered me towards a rooftop that I could follow. Thank goodness.

The place was a block away from me the whole time. Great. Now that I was thoroughly irritated, I checked in. I diverted eye contact as much as possible because I looked like I just got out of a pool, forgot to dry off, and put on my clothes. I am surprised that my printout of the reservation did not disintegrate into pulp along the walk. You would have thought that I ran down the Valens Aqueduct to reach this place in good time. My hike was only roughly three miles in total, nothing to even flinch about in California’s weather, but certainly something to sweat about in Istanbul. I mean, three miles ago in my life I had a completely different physique. Later on that day, no one recognized me when I met up with them…
It was sad ☹ ← see the frown?

I am only kidding. But truly, in the purest form of the phrase, I did exemplify ‘a hot mess’.

I took another shower and prepared for the afternoon. I was to meet the remaining three by the Augustaion around 2pm. I set off around 1:15pm just incase I became lost again, which was completely likely. I was situated close enough to a major bone of Constantinople’s skeleton, so I could have followed that directly to the Hippodrome. But I decided that that was too easy. I took another route, which I thought would be parallel to that bone. I wound up, as usual, having to go under an overpass that had hundreds of Döner Kebap vendors, and then going up a flight of stairs back to the surface. It turns out that I found the middle of Istanbul University’s campus. The main gate, by the way, looks breathtaking. I would have taken pictures but my camera housed an empty battery, and I did not have the right power adapter to charge it. That was something that was on my list of things to get.

From the middle of the campus I headed down through a parking lot and onto Ordu Caddesi, once known as the Mese during Byzantine times. Now that I knew where I was, I headed down to the Augustaion, which was precisely where the road ended.

And I waited.

As I sat there and waited I gazed at the Church of Holy Wisdom. There was plenty to ponder about. I should note that I was not just sitting anywhere. I was, again, upon the Augustaion, recognized as the focal point of the entire Byzantine Empire. Before I go further, one has to keep in mind that the new location for a capital of the Roman Empire that Constantine was searching for had to meet certain criteria to match the original ethereal majesty of Rome. Originally known as the “New Rome” before being dubbed “Constantinople”, the city rests on seven hills like that of the original Rome in Italy. There was also a river that ran through the city that was as symbolic as the Tiber running its course through Rome.

When the city was constructed, it was done so with a precise and thought out plan. From where I was seated, for example, I had the Hagia Sophia in front of me and, at one time, the Grand Imperial Palace was behind me where the Blue Mosque now rests. In a publication that is essentially a compendium of essays having to do with Byzantium, Thomas F. Mathews, in his article titled, Religious Organizations and Church Architecture, states that the location of those two buildings with the Augustaion (Plaza of the Caesars) in the middle, can be viewed as the physical symbolic epicenter of balance that the emperors had to maintain between the secular imperial administration and the religious administration within the empire. Metaphorically it could be viewed as both the left and right sides of the brain, whereas the body is not able to function without the balanced companionship of the other. A more Palaeologian viewpoint would be to use their double headed eagle, where the right and left heads, both facing opposite directions, are planted within the one body and coexist. Anyway, you get the picture.

Right when I was about to pass out from a kind of historical coma, I heard my name. Sure enough it was the remaining three. Marie Packard, Hope Scofield and Jessi Addison had finally settled themselves in their new temporary location and came to meet me.

First things first - we were hungry. We went to a café close by and ate. There was nothing really interesting to note during this meal other than a quite thirsty Marie ordering a coffee, thinking that it was going to be a substantial amount of liquid to quench her thirst. It turned out to be a typical Turkish coffee, brimming to the edge in the thimble that it was poured into. There was also a kid at the table next to us that was playing with a penguinic cat. That was mildly entertaining.

Second things second - time to visit the most amazing place on earth, the Hagia Sophia. Hope decided that she was going to the Egyptian Market down by the Golden Horn instead of roaming the Hagia Sophia with us. To each their own. The two others and I eagerly jumped in the line.


Inside the Hagia Sophia

Caution: If you (the reader) have not done so yet, read my entry entitled, “A Series of Small Walls…” where I break apart the notion of being a tourist who does not have the means to understand what it is they are really witnessing. It is an entry full of facts and a rough timeline of the Hagia Sophia.

It is a place of wonder. But not that kind of wonder that is always associated with the world “childish”. It’s a place of wonder that is beyond human comprehension and demands reverence. Since the 6th century the structure has been a paradigm of original church design. There were other versions of the church beforehand, but none like the current one that we see today, which was, you guessed it, built under the reign of Justinian the Great. It is old and weathered, but it still holds a beauty that expounds, tirelessly, the entire history of humankind. It has been a witness to every kind of behavior and personality possible to encounter. It has seen the coronations of the most blood curdling figures of human history, as well as some of the most penitent and magnanimous. It has survived pounding earthquakes and numerous conflagrations, schisms, and sieges. It is compose of the finest and richest elements that the earth can produce. It played a key role in one of the greatest empires, ever. It is a beholder of mythos, an opulent creation mirrored after heaven, a piece of kindling that can light a whole nation with rattling fervor; and most of all, it is one of the finest examples of what the minds of humankind are capable of bringing into being. Its dimensions stupefy your ability to digest imagery and yet its entire history is still not fully understood and known. And the best part is that it probably will never be fully known, which only adds to its mythos.

As we entered the narthex the imperial doors looked cumbersome and actually worthy of the title, “imperial doors”. During the final siege, Roger Crowley recounts in his book, 1453, “…[that] the Janissary's hacked down the imperial doors and proceeded to capture people as slaves, plunder, and destroy." The Hagia Sophia was one of the last places of refuge for the survivors of the Ottoman siege. St. Michael, it was believed, was to descend from heaven and save the remaining citizens of the Byzantine Empire from the butchery. But that did not happen.


Myself in front of the Imperial Doors

As we walked through the doors neighboring the imperial, we set foot in the nave, which still holds the evidence of its true age within the Proconnesian marble on the floor. Also in 1453, Crowley states, “As [Mehmet II, 'The Conqueror'] stepped inside the great church, he seemed to be both amazed and appalled at what he saw. As he walked across the great space he caught sight of a soldier smashing away at the marble floor. He asked the man why he was doing this. "For the Faith," the man replied. Infuriated by this visible defiance of his orders to preserve the buildings, he struck the man with his sword.”

As we looked up in the center, we could see the famous dome, which is really as John Julius Norwich describes, “Broader and higher than any other dome previously constructed, it is a shallow saucer pierced around its rim with forty windows so that it appeared to be 'suspended from heaven by a golden chain'.”


'suspended from heaven by a golden chain'

We continued over to a more quiet area of the church, towards where the diakonikon would have been (the room to the right of the altar). There was a cat that somehow meandered in past security. He was basking on the marble floors in the sunlight beaming through the windows. Oddly enough he was not a black and white ‘penguinic’ cat. A guard eventually took note of the little beast and ushered it back to where it came from.


A Small Beast that Lurked within the Back Walls

Along the way to the second story we passed the spot where all the Byzantine Emperors, except for Constantine XI, were crowned with the imperial diadem. It is in the format of a square and is composed of every type of marble the empire could conjure up. The design is a reflection of the emperor’s sole ability to reign over all the different regions of the empire, which are represented in the different marbles. To imagine the marble as it once was, the poet Paul the Silentiary wrote an exquisite piece describing it:

“...the fresh green from Carystus, and many colored marble from the Phrygian range, in which a rosy blush mingles with white or shines bright with flowers of deep red and silver. There is a wealth of porphyry too, powdered with brilliant stars, that once weighed down the boats of the broad Nile. You may see an emerald green from Sparta, and the glittering marble with the undulating veins which the tool has worked from the deep bosom of the Iassian hills, showing slanting streaks of blood-red and livid white... Stone too there is that the Libyan sun, warming with his golden light, has nurtured from the dark clefts of the Moorish hills, of crocus color sparkling like gold; and that product of the Celtic crags, a wealth of crystals, like milk splashed over a surface of shining black. There is the precious onyx, looking as if gold were glowing through it, and the marble that the land of Atrax yields... in parts a fresh green like the sea or emerald stone, or again like blue cornflowers in grass, with here and there a drift of fallen snow...”


Location of Coronations

From the second story, again, we were in awe over the mosaics; all of which were made after the spell of Iconoclasm that the empire fell into for a short period around the 8th and 9th centuries. From here, the illusion of the limitlessness of space that the vaults create really starts to arrest your senses. One almost becomes numb trying to process it all. Though the version of the Hagia Sophia that we were witnessing that day was barebones compared to other times in its history, one can still piece together what it might have looked like with the remaining partially uncovered mosaics. Paul the Silentiary also recounted that, "The vaulting is formed of countless little squares of gold cemented together. And the golden stream of glittering rays pours down and strikes the eyes of men, so that they can scarcely bear to look. It is as if one were to gaze upon the mid-day sun in spring, when it gilds every mountain height.” He wrote that for a service on Christmas Eve in 563 AD. Okay, so maybe we cannot even begin to imagine what the place once looked like. But it was still amazing to see it with my own eyes.

Remember, my camera has been dead this whole time. There was no way I was going to leave Istanbul without capturing images of the Hagia Sophia, so I decided that I would come back tomorrow to explore it in more depth.

I could go on forever about the place, but I think I should save some material for the next entry.

Once we were satiated enough with Hagia Sophia goodness, we walked through the streets to the Egyptian Market, where we were to meet up with Hope. She was waiting for us outside the entrance and we then decided to head back to their bus’s embarkation point by walking back through the market. So we walked and walked. Through the Egyptian Market and up the same hill Denise and I walked up the day before. Only, I kept on a main path and did not stray to the left whenever possible. This caused us to run into the back entrance to the Grand Bazaar.

Moving on -

By the time 7pm rolled around, the remaining three were on the bus headed out of Istanbul and on their way back home to the States. I was alone now in Constantinople and had the rest of the week to continue to explore the Byzantine relics still remaining here.

Though I had seen an enormous amount by now, my Indiana Jones hat was still far from coming off.