Tag Archives: Istanbul

This remarkable new recording from the choir Cappella Romana uses digital processing to recreate Byzantine chant as worshipers in Hagia Sophia would have heard it.

Hughes makes it easy to believe that should human civilization persist another thousand years, Istanbul – by whatever name it may go by at that time – is likely to remain central to its region and the world.

The true story of 'the girl with the red foulard,' killed fighting with the PKK against the so-called Islamic State just as this production prepared to mount, takes its place in the connected and seemingly neverending sagas of the war on terror and the struggle for self-determination in the face of what may seem destiny.

This sweet story slides from religious tradition into the traditions that arise in an individual family – the legends, the habits, the clashes, and the spoken and too-often unspoken feelings.

The influence of Turkish music on Turkish-American composer Karman Ince's work brightens his intriguing, rewarding, and often fun pieces with vivid color.

Turkey's biggest palace, a Genoese tower, dinner with new friends, a cruise up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea, two continents, even a synagogue – all on our last two action-packed days in Istanbul.

The Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque may be the most famous structures in Istanbul, and they are certainly spectacular, but I was more taken with the largest purpose-built mosque in the city: The Süleymaniye Mosque, built in the 1550s by master architect Sinan at the command of Süleyman the Magnificent.

Visiting the great monuments of Istanbul's Sultanahmet Square district