ISTANBUL

It is one of the most interesting cities on the planet, the former Constantinople capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for a millennium which fell into the hands of the Turks only in 1453 while Rome, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, fell as early as 476 AD. by the barbarians. Therefore it became the capital of the great Ottoman Empire which occupied a vast territory not only in the Balkans, but also Greece, the Middle East, excluding Persia, Egypt and part of North Africa, excluding Morocco. Today it is a country of 90 million inhabitants that is continually growing, with an ambitious president who pursues a policy that is sometimes aggressive and sometimes acts as a peacemaker. Istanbul today is a metropolis of 15 million inhabitants, practically the largest in Europe, almost twice as many as London and with two million more than Moscow. It is crossed by the Bosphorus canal, approximately 30 km long, which divides the European part from the Asian part and connects the Black Sea with the Sea of ​​Marmara, which in turn is connected to the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles Strait. The Bosphorus is also crossed by three long bridges which they connect the western European shore to the eastern Asian one with lengths of 1 to 2 km. it is advisable to take a boat and travel along the canal admiring the beauty of the place and the various surrounding villas and palaces, you can spend as little as 5 euros for the basic tour The main attractions of Istanbul are: - the Grand Bazaar, the largest covered market with countless internal streets, frescoed vaults and over 4,000 shops divided by specialty selling everything from spices to carpets, jewellery, clothes and shoes. -the three flies, the Blue Mosque definitely the most beautiful with 20,000 colored tiles from blue to turquoise inside and a gigantic round dome outside and many other smaller ones as well as various minarets which give it a unique elegance, the Hagia Sofia built and made built around 500 by Emperor Justinian and converted around 1700 by Sultan Mehemet II into a mosque, then in the 1930s by the Turkish president Ataturk into a museum and recently reconverted into a mosque and finally the beautiful mosque of Sultan Suleiman which is located on a panoramic hill - the palace of the Topkapi sultans in a strategic and panoramic position on the Bosphorus which was the residence of many sultans and their wives and courts which for exactly a century has become a museum with courtyards, kiosks, gardens and palaces of which the harem is the most noteworthy and that of the treasure which contains a precious dagger set with precious gems and a famous diamond worth over 800 karat the Galata bridge which is not fixed, but sways slightly and contains various restaurants on its sides where you can eat excellent fish - the Galata tower built by the Genoese who held part of the territories in the Middle Ages - the 1.3 km long pedestrian and shopping street Istlikal Caddesi with shopping centres, various shops, cinemas, restaurants and which ends on Taksim Square, a well-known meeting point and also for city protests - the ancient district of Sultanahmet where you can breathe the air of other times I visited it three times, the first in 1986 during a group trip centered on Turkey and Jordan, the second a couple of years later when I returned with my partner to visit the eastern part of the country and the third during a stop-over of the Turkish Airline that flew me to South East Asia and I have always enjoyed seeing it again and I highly recommend it<

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