Istanbul: A Brief Guide To The City

This book is a shorter and more concise version of our comprehensive guide to the city, Strolling Through Istanbul (Redhouse Press, 1972). Whereas that work includes virtually all of the city's monuments, the present guide restricts itself, for the greatest part, to only the most important and itneresting antiquities, those which no visitor should miss. Thus this brief guide should prove useful for those who have only a limited time to spend in istanbul. But this is a seductive town, and many who had planned only a shot stay linger on indeinitely; in fact some so fall in love with the place that they neer leave. And so we have added a last chapter which takes the visitor through many of the picturesque byways of Istanbul, in search of the ancient monuments capital here. Although the main emphasis of this guide is on the antiquities of Istanbul, the city is not treated as if it were merely an inhabited museum, for the old town itself is as interesting and colorful as the antiquities that it preserves. Instead, the ancient monuments are described in the context of the living, modern town of which they are still an integral part -that intimate juxtaposition of old and new which makes Istanbul such an enchanting city.