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Topkapi Sarayi (Topkapi Palace) – Istanbul

Topkapi Palace was the residence of the Ottoman sultans from the 15th to 19th centuries.  When Sultan Mehmet conquered Istanbul in 1453, he made Istanbul the capital of his empire.  His first palace was set in the middle of the town. In the 1470s, he built his second palace and initially named it the New [...]

Yerebatan Sarnıcı

Built by the Emperor Justinian at the same time as the Haghia Sophia, it was forgotten for centuries and only rediscovered by a Frenchman, Peter Gyllius, in 1545 when he noticed that people in the neighbourhood got water by lowering buckets through holes in their basements. It’s a tremendous engineering feat, with brick vaults supported [...]

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia was choosen a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1985. Rebuilt by the orders of Emperor Justinian in 537, for 900 years Hagia Sophia had been the center of Orthodox Christianity until 1453 when the city was concurred by Ottomans. 500 years following the conquest of Muslims, it became a jewel for the [...]

Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge

The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, also known as the Second Bosphorus Bridge (in Turkish: Fatih Sultan Mehmet Köprüsü, F.S.M. Köprüsü or 2. Boğaziçi Köprüsü), is a bridge in Istanbul, Turkey spanning the Bosphorus strait (Turkish: Boğaziçi). The bridge is named after the 15th century Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who took Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453 [...]