As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this website I’m no historian. When it comes to remembering important names and people, I’m forever looking things up and almost immediately forgetting them, unless I actually visit an historical sight and the experience brings the facts to life. As you can imagine, writing a brief history of the Ottomans…
Banks and other corporations have collected art as part of their private portfolios since the 19th century. Usually kept behind closed doors, it’s not often shared publicly. However in Istanbul, some of the most interesting exhibitions happen in bank owned galleries. Compelling painting displays, installations, photographs and film screenings are open to the public in…
I’ve long appreciated cemeteries. As a teenager I spent a lot of time pondering over the lives of the many people buried in the Gore Hill Cemetery in St Leonards, Sydney, where I grew up. Even aged 14 I thought it ironic that rooms in the adjacent hospital overlooked the graves. Gore Hill was established…
I’m a winter baby and I love when the temperature drops so I can roam Istanbul to my heart’s content without getting too hot. It’s really lovely to visit Istanbul in winter, as Julia Bayne, business owner at Istanbul Place Apartments – offering historic apartments for short stays in Galata – knows well. You remember…
When I studied history at high school we learned about World War I from an Antipodean perspective. Heroic Australian Johnnies fought local Mehmets at Gallipoli, the Germans were eventually defeated and everyone went back home again. What we weren’t told about was what happened next, the Liberation of Istanbul and Turkey. Even before the war…
Every week I try to have two what I call outing days in Istanbul. One is with my husband Kim and usually involves a museum or art gallery visit and lunch at one of our regular favourites. The aim is to enjoy each other’s company, learn something new, and of course, eat. For the second…
Ever since I first came to Turkey in 1990 after hitchhiking through the UK and travelling in Europe, I’ve read hundreds of interesting books about Turkey in many different genres. Although I graduated in sociology and prefer cultural and social studies about Turkey to history books, basically I read anything that takes my interest. Having…
Like Pierre Loti Cafe, which probably wouldn’t still exist if a woman hadn’t got involved, much of the city was built by Istanbul women whose unofficial machinations made them more powerful than the sultans they married or the sons they birthed. Women who fought for their rights while helping to establish the Turkish Republic. Turkish…
For this year’s birthday post I thought I’d tell you about my long horror hate relationship with kelle paça, sheep head soup for the uninitiated. My intense dislike of offal started long before I moved to Turkey, although as a four year old I apparently loved the tongue soup my nana made, at least according…
Every year Muslims around the world take part in Ramadan when for thirty days they allow no food or drink to pass their lips in daylight hours. True believers are also required to abstain from sex. Doing without is a personal statement of faith and shows solidarity with those who have very little all the…