Story and Photos by Libor Pospisil.
Feature Image: The exotic side of Istanbul, south of the Galata Bridge, favored by visitors.
Preparing to visit Istanbul, I began by reading Orhan Pamuk’s book Istanbul: Memories and the City. Born in 1952 and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature for The Museum of Innocence, Pamuk created such a vivid image of his hometown that I wanted to see that secret Istanbul for myself. With just three days devoted to touring Istanbul, I tried to balance visits to the traditional monuments with strolls through the neighborhoods that Pamuk referred to in his book.
On the other side of the Galata Bridge: I stayed in the northern Tophane neighborhood. The famous sights of the Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace remained on the other side of the Galata Bridge, but I could easily reach them by tram. In Tophane, I relished engaging with the local culture because I was just a short walk from the neighborhoods where most locals go.
What appealed to me about Pamuk’s Istanbul was that it did not revolve around sultans, mosques, harems, and bazaars. He considered that a Western exoticized version of the city. Instead, his Istanbul languished around the mid-twentieth century when the fall of the Ottoman Empire still haunted the living memory, and rapid modernization had yet to begin. For Pamuk, there was an air of decline hovering over the city. Unsure of its identity, the country had become a republic and attempted to embrace everything Western.
Seeking to capture that vision of Istanbul, I walked through the neighborhoods mentioned in his book—Galata, Çukurcuma, Cihangir, Taksim, and farther out, Nişantaşı, where Pamuk grew up. Aside from the ever-dominating Galata Tower, the neighborhoods do not have spectacular structures. But to me, walking, they gave the city its character and life. The busy, narrow streets, lined with old and new residential buildings with ground-floor shops and cafes, spoke of life now as in the past. Many streets involved strenuous walks uphill and downhill, sometimes with panoramic views on the horizon. The occasional garden in the middle of a block provided a green respite for locals (and me) from the sultry summer city.
It was intriguing to come across rare wooden houses that had not been remodeled for decades. In Pamuk’s book, they are the main characters since they were considered eye-sores in the 1960s and marks of decline that the city needed to eradicate as quickly as possible. Now, only a few remain. They stand as grand last witnesses to a past now gone, sadly waiting for their modernization or destruction.
The People of Istanbul: In Çukurcuma, I went to the Museum of Innocence, a small cultural center created by Pamuk to accompany his eponymous Nobel Prize-winning novel. The museum resides in a painted wooden house and it won the 2014 European Museum of the Year Award. It contains artifacts that follow the novel’s story but also bring to life the city of the past century. There is a dress, old photographs, a bed, a bottle of the first Turkish soda, a lot of cigarette butts, and documents from a healing stay in a yali—an important term which refers to an old, water-front mansion on the Bosporus outside Istanbul.
Next to the museum, I stood outside an old wooden house, still in its original state, with a cat sitting on its fence. An older gentleman was walking into the house and saw me taking a picture. He pointed to the cat and said: “Pamuk.” That was the only time a local referred to the writer unprompted. The museum visitors I encountered were exclusively from abroad, which made me concerned that reading Orhan Pamuk’s work had become a hipster fad despite his now distant 2006 Nobel Prize in literature. But that concern disappeared when I opened a copy of his novel, The Museum of Innocence, which I just purchased in the museum shop, and as with his other Istanbul book, I saw beautiful writing. The smoothly flowing, simple words created the power to draw me immediately into the story.
Still, Pamuk’s appreciation within Turkey feels different. When I spent time with locals in a café at Taksim Square, a young lady responded to my question: “Pamuk? The Turkish people don’t read him that much. Mostly foreigners do.” I smiled at how similar his fate is to Kafka or Kundera, who are rarely admired among my fellow Czechs.
Pamuk was well aware of the reasons for the disconnect—his books refer to his wealthy, business-owning family with real estate around the city. For them, frequent trips to the West were common, but naturally, they were not typical for the less affluent. I walked past his childhood apartment building, about which he had written extensively in his Istanbul book. It was adorned with a “Pamuk Apartments” sign. The surrounding Nişantaşı neighborhood used to be just well-to-do, but it has now morphed into the most upscale corner of the city with boutique shops and exclusive restaurants. The only reminders of the old times are the street vendors selling simits, the ubiquitous Istanbul bagels.
The city is now so different from the turn of the 19th-century era that Pamuk describes. Since then, Istanbul’s population has exploded fourteenfold! Suburbs have sprawled in all directions, and long metro lines keep getting longer. Of the locals I met at the café at Taksim, none was born in Istanbul. All moved there as young adults from Turkish towns near and far. In addition, there are communities of expatriates in the city, immigrants from the West and the East.
Palaces of Istanbul: The story of Pamuk’s Istanbul begins in the nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire was in decline. The Sultans began to Westernize, which they saw as the only way to keep up with Western Europe. Nowhere is the shift more visible than in their palaces.
I ended up visiting Topkapi Palace, the old fortress residence of the Ottoman sultans, with a harem and halls filled with Islamic ornaments and divans. My primary motivation was to contrast it with Dolmabahçe Palace, built by the nineteenth-century sultans as their modern and comfortable home. The rooms in Dolmabahçe are also majestic, but they resemble Western palaces, with French-style golden armchairs instead of divans.
Even the façades and porticos of Dolmabahçe are thoroughly Western. What makes the palace unique is its airy location right on the Bosporus, with gardens separated from the blue waters only by an ornate fence. It is the most pleasant spot for a refreshing walk in the city.
On the Bosporus: I traveled outside the city to retrace what Pamuk describes as the usual weekend Bosporus trip. I took a bus along the strait all the way to the fortress of Rumeli Hisarı. The fortress rises along a steep slope from the water promenade. It was built in 1452 by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror as a security checkpoint on the Bosporus before the final assault on Constantinople. Pamuk refers to the canons exhibited at the fortress, which he admired as a boy.
Some of the immense compound was renovating, but I could still climb a few trails. The scenery was spectacular, with the massive round towers below me, the Bosporus at its narrowest right behind them, and the 1985 suspension bridge in the background, connecting the hills on both sides of the strait.
One could watch for hours the summer blue skies, the greenery, and the busy maritime traffic on the water. No wonder, apart from being a weekend destination, the slopes of the Bosporus became favored places by the Istanbul elite to build houses and yalis. Pamuk decried their later neglect and destruction, but I managed to find one surviving example near the fortress—the House of Tevfik Fikret. He was an early twentieth-century poet and painter who designed his house at the spot with perfect views. Today, it is a museum that preserves the poet’s memory—his tomb is in the garden—and gives us another glimpse into the lost era Pamuk recreates in his books.
At the waterfront, I walked past a row fisherman and then noticed local men lounging in their swimwear around a rusty ladder leading into the water. This was not a prime Mediterranean beach, but I could not resist and followed them to take a swim. I did not care about the tankers passing behind our backs because the water was too refreshing in the summer heat. Afterward, I continued my walk until I reached the resort town of Bebek, where I boarded a ferry back to Istanbul.
From the ferry, I saw how both sides of the strait were developed, with new houses lurking in the forest. Pamuk says this is “the ugly construction that would crop up over the next forty years” since his childhood. To eyes that have witnessed abrupt over-development around the world, it does not look all that bad.
The sun began to set as the ferry approached the city. Even though I promised myself not to fall for the exotic of Istanbul, I could not help myself at that moment. We passed by Ortaköy Mosque, proudly showing its Ottoman decoration against a much taller modern bridge standing next to it. The city became darker as the sky turned orange. I took a photo (the Feature Image above). The silhouettes of mosques interspersed with towers and high rises covered all sides of the town. That was a neat illustration of the key geographical fact about Istanbul. It does not have one dominating central district. Each neighborhood thrives on its own.
Modern Istanbul: Back in my neighborhood of Tophane Square, the latest blend of Ottoman and modern Istanbul is exhibited. On the one side is a traditional Ottoman fountain, a mosque, and an ornate clock tower, but all with rejuvenated-modernized features. That way, they withstand the stark contrast created by the sprawling glass creation on the other side of the square—the Istanbul Modern Museum, opened in 2023.
Istanbul Modern houses paintings by modern Turkish artists, but interestingly, they also had an exhibit of black-and-white photographs of life in Turkey from decades ago. I walked through the gleaming minimalist rooms of the new museum, looking at photographs of a villager’s family riding on a single donkey, a peasant plowing a field, or a child in front of a disintegrating wooden house in Istanbul. It reminded me that Pamuk’s Istanbul book also contains numerous black-and-white photographs of the city from that bygone era. In fact, the collection of his photographs was the impetus for Pamuk to write his book. Modernity came to Turkey, but the memory of the life before its arrival has a firm hold on the country’s culture.
One side of the museum faces directly onto the Bosporus, and the top floor has a terrace to appreciate the views. When I was leaning against the railing, looking at the city, I could not help reviewing the mood in Pamuk’s book or the photographs downstairs. The photos often captured discomfort, winter scenes, and a certain melancholy, which Pamuk called hüzün. Maybe because I went during the summer, I still saw the city as just another tourist, or perhaps the last few decades of development changed things. Still, the city came across as youthful, dynamic, and upbeat to me despite the challenges of Turkish politics, which the locals discussed quite openly.
Cozy place to spend time:
On my last walk through the residential streets, I stopped by a neighborhood bookshop with a cat as its signature emblem. Real cats were running among the overflowing bookshelves. Cats rule the city these days, with the stray dogs from Pamuk’s book becoming more of a rarity.
I smiled when I saw the bookshop selling black-and-white photographs. But I bought a map there instead. As the sales lady was packing it for me, she offered that I rest on their sofa and have some tea in a traditional ince belli glass. Sipping on it and seeing young people strolling outside the window reinforced the view I formed during my stay. Istanbul is not only a beautiful collection of monuments from the past. It is also an incredibly pleasant city in which to spend time.
IF YOU GO: South of the Galata Bridge:Hagia Sophia https://muze.gen.tr/muze-detay/ayasofya; Topkapi Palace https://muze.gen.tr/muze-detay/topkapi
North of the Galata Bridge: Galata Tower https://muze.gen.tr/muze-detay/galatakulesi; The Museum of Innocence https://www.masumiyetmuzesi.org/en; Istanbul Modern https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en; Dolmabahçe Palace https://www.dolmabahce-palace.com/
Around Bebek on the Bosporus: Rumeli Hisarı fortress https://muze.gen.tr/muze-detay/rumeli;House of Tevfik Fikret http://en.besiktas.bel.tr/entry/tevfik-fikret-museum/