Istanbul, as we’ve hinted before, is awash in museums. And, as we are museum aficionados, we’ve tried to visit a good number of them. They come in all sizes, from the one-room museum of Barın Han, a fantastic calligrapher of the early 20th-century, to the Archaeology Museum, to the vast rooms of Topkapi Palace with collections spanning centuries. We highlight here just a few of the recent museums we’ve visited.
First up is the Great Palace Mosaic Museum. It occupies a two-storey building, with mosaics spread out on the ground floor and a raised walkway around the perimeter so that you can look down. The mosaics were unearthed in the 1930s and again in the 1950s by archaeologists from St Andrews University in Scotland. They originally belonged to a Byzantine palace, perhaps from Justinian’s time but more likely from Heraclius’ (early 7th century). The predominant scenes are of hunting and wild animals. There are bears, elephants, camels as well as the more familiar goats and rabbits. There are splendid scenes of two men attacking a tiger and a gryphon with a lizard in its mouth. But there are also more domestic scenes: a young girl carrying a pot, a man milking a goat. On the walkway level there are lots of photographs, some showing the original excavations.
Next is the Askerî Müze, the Istanbul Military Museum, in the building which was once the Ottoman Imperial Military Academy. Here Atatürk studied: they show a replica of the report card for his entire class. He was 11th in his class of about 30! Good news for the average among us: it doesn’t seem to have stopped him from doing some impressive things. The Museum itself commemorates a thousand years of military history, going back to the Huns. There are numerous with weapons of all kinds and displays of military uniforms from several eras. There are many wonderful maps throughout. We usually find dioramas hokey if not outright humorous, but we liked the Siege of Constantinople by Mehmet. There is also a big chunk of the chain which the Byzantines put up across the Golden Horn to prevent ships from entering. (Mehmet figured a way around it.)
We’ve saved our fave for last: The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. The building is the former residence of Ibrahim Pasha, second grand vizier to Suleyman the Magnificent. It is located along the Hippodrome. We loved not only the beautiful objects on display, but the way things were displayed. Rooms follow a chronological order, and each displays just a few objects relevant to that period. Rather than inundating you with huge numbers of objects that you can’t really process, here you can take your time in each room to see everything displayed.
And the objects themselves are truly beautiful. At the end of the museum is a huge room full of carpets from early Ottoman times to almost the present. (We were delighted to see this since the Carpet Museum seems to have closed.) Since we’re somewhat partial to carpets, you can imagine how much we enjoyed these.
So those are just a few of our recent visits. We may write a future post about one or two more.
