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The Directory › Asia › Turkey › Istanbul
Plate III · v · a · The City

Istanbul

One entry, an hour up the strait from everything the guidebooks send you to, and the journey is not the price of the visit — it is the visit.

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A timber waterfront house on the Bosphorus seen from the water under low overcast light
Plate III · v · a · The Upper Bosphorus

The whole shoreline is a row of houses built to be looked at from a boat. Oblige them.

A day, properly arranged
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One entry makes a short day on paper. The water lengthens it, agreeably.

The entries

One entry, visited, and kept without qualification.
A dim panelled room of glazed cases and dark cabinetry, cool daylight through a shuttered window over water
Interior · a room facing the strait

Cases on one side, the water on the other, and the light off the strait moving across both. I gave up on the cases twice and did not regret it.

OCTOBER, EARLY AFTERNOON
Notes for Istanbul

Go by boat. I say it on the country page and I will say it here, because everyone is told the road is quicker and everyone who takes it arrives in a worse mood. The ferry up the strait is the correct approach, and the houses along the way set you up for the one you have come to see.

October suited it exactly — clear light off the water, cool enough to keep walking, and a crowd that was exemplary in the sense of barely existing. Summer would be a different and busier proposition.

Do not treat this as a morning to be got through before the old city. It sits at the far end of a long day in the opposite direction; give it the day, come back on the water at dusk, and let the famous things wait for tomorrow.

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