When The Knights of Rhodes had built the castle in honor of St. Peter (1415-1437), they used some of the marbles of the Mausoleum which was destroyed by an earthquake in 14th century. There are five main towers in the castle, reflecting the architectural styles of the nations by whom they were constructed, called English Tower, French Tower, Spanish Tower, Italian Tower and German Tower. The museum collections are housed in those towers. In 1960, Bodrum Castle was converted i

The Museum of Innocence was established by the Nobel Prize winner Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who wrote a novel bearing the same name. From the very beginning of the project since the 1990s, Pamuk has conceived both novel and museum together. The novel, which is a lovestory, is set between 1974 and the early ’00s, and describes life in Istanbul between 1950 and 2000 through memories and flashbacks centred around two families – one wealthy, the other lower middle class. The mu

The monastery was founded in 386 AD during the reign of the Emperor Theodosius. Legend has it that two priests undertook its creation after discovering a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave on the mountain. During its long history, the monastery fell into ruin several times and was restored by various emperors and sultans. The monastery remained a popular destination for monks and travelers through the years. In 1682 and for a few decades, the monastery housed the Ph

A blend of various European architectural styles, this palace was built between 1843-1856 by Karabet Balyan, the court architect of Sultan Abdulmecid. The Dolmabahçe Palace was home to six sultans from 1856, when it was first inhabited, up until the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. This three-storied palace has 285 rooms and 43 halls. There is a 600 m long quay along the sea and two monumental gates, one of them very ornate, on the land side. Well-kept, beautiful gardens s

'Bridegroom, dear to my heart; goodly is your beauty, honeysweet; lion, dear to my heart'. These are the passionate words of a lover to a king, from more than 4,000 years ago, in the oldest known love poem ever found. The loving words were passed down over generations, eventually inscribed on an 8th century BC Sumerian cuneiform tablet small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. It was uncovered in the 1880s in Nippur, a region in what is now Iraq, and has been held by The

Did you ever wonder why do christians hang stockings or shoes for Santa Claus ? I was also wondering till I came across the story belove.    There was a man, once rich, who had fallen on hard times. Now poor, he had three daughters of an age to be married. In those days a young woman's family had to have something of value, a dowry, to offer prospective bridegrooms. The larger the dowry, the better the chance a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman w

Safranbolu is a town in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The Old Town is situated in a deep ravine in a fairly dry area in the rain shadow of the mountains. The New Town can be found on the plateau about two kilometers west of the Old Town. The name of the town derives from 'saffron' and the Greek word 'polis' (city), since Safranbolu was a trading place and a center for growing saffron. Today saffron is still grown at the village of Davutobası which is 22 km east of Safranbol

The art of marbling (Ebru Sanatı) Ebru has long been the name given to the authentic Turkish art of paper marbling to the marbled papers produced by Ebru artists. Classical Ebru is performed using aqueous natural pigments mixed with ogall and a rectangular trough filled with mucilaginous mixture, traditionally prepared using gum tragacanth. Colors are sprinkled using brushes mad of rose stalks and horsehair on the surface of the mucilaginous solution in the trough. The floati

Miletus is originally a coastal town, now located over ten kilometers from the sea. Here St. Paul met with the Ephesian elders and made his farewell speech. Milet is renowned for the famous philosophers it produced such as Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. Maritime trading propelled the development of Milet and it became an important centre of commerce. Many ancient structures are still well preserved, the most prominent of them are the grand theatre, with a seating capacit