‘Istanbul…the constant beating of the wave of the East against the rock of the West.’ Susan Moody Haghia Sophia (visual is taken from kulturveyasam.com) Istanbul’s culture is a unique blend of Eastern and Western traditions. Constantinople—the former name of modern-day…
Same-sex love is not new to Istanbul. Neither is the attempt to control it. Long…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 15/09/2026
Burial of victims of the Black Death at Tournai, 1349. In 1347, death arrived in…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 11/09/2026
Pera Ensemble Long before opera arrived in Istanbul, music was already travelling between East and…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 11/09/2026
Long before the grand theatres of nineteenth-century Pera, before the Naum Theatre, and almost two…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 11/09/2026
For one weekend in September, some of Istanbul’s normally inaccessible historic buildings open their doors…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 11/09/2026
“The city, sleeping pensively, is now but a memory,As children and soldiers fade in albums.”…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 09/09/2026
The Blood Libel, an early 18th-century painting by Karol de Prévot in Sandomierz Cathedral, Poland,…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 08/09/2026
Italian painter Fausto Zonaro (1854–1929) painted the Sinezens in Üsküdar, around the Iranian Cemetery and…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 08/09/2026