Thomas Allom (1804-1872)
Travelling the world to see new countries and new cultures with a willingness to widen one’s world view is common place today but traveling the world was a rare phenomenon only the very few could accomplish in the world before us. Only the wealthiest and the most powerful had the vision and the resources to travel. In the 19th century, Istanbul was one of the most desired ‘exotic’ destinations for the most elite western travellers with rich intellectual and monetary resources and Thomas Allom was one of them. He was a prominent British architect and painter. He was the founder of Royal Academy of British Architects and had been the architect of many buildings in London of his day.
Allom visited İstanbul in early 1800s and made wonderful paintings of İstanbul and its inhabitants that give a glimpse of how beautiful Istanbul was back then. They are like the living reminders of Istanbul’s past. He published his book Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in 1838 in which there is a rich collection of his Istanbul paintings. Due to the Islamic tradition which prohibits painting, if it were not for Allom and western painters like him, we would not be able have a visual past of our city. We owe him a deep gratitude for all these beautiful paintings that links us to our past.
Now, let’s leave it all to Thomas Allom’s paintings for them to take us to a world before us. All of these neighbourhoods he painted are still with us today.
