Istanbul, Tuesday 17 June, Day 55

My phone this morning gives me the current temperature for two locations, Istanbul - 22 at 7.30 am, and Altona -  11 at 2.30 pm. A reminder that we should enjoy these beautiful blue skies and warm days while we can.   A good thought to keep in mind as we puff and pant our way up the hill and walk to our first stop of the day, the Istanbul_Archaeology_Museums.  They are in a very good spot for an archeology museum, as this spot has been the focus for so many civilizations over thousands of years. One cabinet is filled with finds from an excavation to lay foundations for extensions to the Museum.  The Byzantines, and then the Ottomans have controlled vast swathes of the planet's surface and have both cheerfully appropriated so much, that the resulting collection is astonishing, the glazed tile gate from the temple of Ishtar, artefacts from Troy, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician as well as Greek and Roman statues, artefacts plus Islamic ceramics.

The museum also has some wonderful artefacts from the past of the city itself including a bit of one of the serpent's heads from the Serpent_Column and some links of the chain that was strung across the mouth of the Golden Horn to prevent hostile ships entering that body of water.

There is so much stuff that the surrounding gardens are stacked with statues, fragments of lintels some beautifully carved, columns and capitals. We had morning tea on a terrace surrounded by assorted chunks of antique stonework.

Use and re-use are big in Istanbul. I particularly liked a Herma that had lost its head, and had been reused as a baluster. A translation of its Greek inscription reads

For a beneficent god

For good fortune

For a fine season

For rain bearing winds

For  prosperous summer

For an autumn

For a winter

It always amazes me how you can find some object that speaks across the centuries, and you get a sense of connection. Today it was just abut the last thing we saw in the Museum, a Roman Gravestone for a dog. The dog on the stone stele was lovingly carved, a large shaggy thing, and the inscription read in part:

His owner has buried the dog Parthenope that he played with

in gratitude for this happiness (Mutual).

Love is rewarding, like the one for this dog.

Having been a friend to my owner

I have deserved this grave.

After a siesta back at the hotel we had a late lunch then set off for our long awaited visit to the Hagia_Sophia. It was the spiritual heart of Constantinople, and it has pretty much been the key destination that we've been heading towards since we left Melbourne.  I was moved to stand in the portico, to see the vast bronze doors and the marble steps worn down by centuries of footsteps, and then to be in that space that has been the location of so much. It is an imposing space and it has an extraordinary atmosphere.

You can see from the scaffolding that there are restoration works in progress. There certainly is plenty to do. More mosaics are hidden under plaster, paint is peeling, and the floor on the upper gallery is unnervingly uneven, as if a bit of the supporting structure has dropped a few centremetres. But for a building that has been in pretty much continuous use since 542 and that has seen so much, it is doing  marvellously well. It was a very satisfying visit.

On the way back to the hotel we bought a few things to bring home, then went out to celebrate a great day with some lamb cutlets and a small bottle of Turkish red wine at our favourite restaurant.

Feels like we're getting to the end, and we are wrestling with the question of which of the many pleasant activities on offer we should explore in our last few days here.