Sultanhamet……a beautiful seaside city tucked away in Istanbul, Turkey. I guess this is where we started out on our journey to capture the beauty of the world though our photographs. We had just bought ourselves cameras, and like so many others before us, decided that from this day forward, every one of our photos would be masterpieces.
Sultanhamet is located in the old city of Istanbul. We travelled from the Ataturk Airport by train and then caught the connecting tram in to Sultanhamet, which is a World Heritage Site because of the numerous structures and historical prominence that it had during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
Probably the two most historical structures here are the Blue Mosque, so named because of the blue tiles that cover it, and the Hagia Sofia…a structure that was the first built in the year 537 as a Church under the Byzantine Empire, then converted to a Catholic Cathedral and finally after the Ottoman empire conquered Constantinople in the 15th century, it was converted to a mosque. Early Christian in the 19th century it was used as a museum, but again in 2020 it was re-established as a mosque.
A walk along the streets enabled us to capture some of the views of these two magnificient structures. We were also fortunate to be able to get an opportunity to photograph both these buildings from a higher viewpoint, which gave them an altogether different look.
Another site that we visited, was the Topkapi Castle which is a short walk away from the main square at Sultanhamet. Neither of us had even seen a castle before, so it was rather intimidating to stand at the entrance and photograph the turrets that rose way into the sky above us. We were so excited to do this that we failed to notice the way the turrets were leaning inward and were so distorted… it was only much later when we got back home and re-examined our pictures that we realized our mistakes. I guess we learn through our mistakes, it helps make us better at what we do.
There is so much to write about Istanbul and Sultanhamet, but we will keep that for another post….
Hello! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after browsing through some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Anyways, I’m definitely happy I found it and I’ll be book-marking and checking back frequently!
Thank you, appreciated
a large and sturdy wall, is this a relic of the Islamic empire, very beautiful
Yes it is..