Istanbul's Bosphorus strait flows between the Black and Marmara seas connecting Georgia to Greece and the Sea of Azov with the Aegean. Docked nearby the Dolmabache palace enormously extravagant cruise liners pour travellers into the city for a fast paced one day race through history. Container ships loaded high with commerce churn through its currents as ferries move the local population to their work. Both its European and Asian shores are lined with palaces and...

The Hagia Sofia church has stood defiant for 15 centuries before empires and earthquakes. Built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 537AD, it was the centre of that world's worship until Ottoman Turks took the city and converted it into a mosque in 1453. The Ottoman emperor Mehmet the Conqueror gave his soldiers just three days to remove all signs of Christianity from within the magnificent cathedral. Beautiful gold leaf mosaics and the faces of flying angels w...

Incredible Istanbul! 14 million people -10 million tourists - 12000 tour guides - 3000 mosques. Islam has been the religious and cultural faith and force in Anatolia (Turkey from 1923) since the capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman conqueror Mehmet the 2nd. Once the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and the centre of Byzantine Christianity, minaret spires not steeples now dominate the skyline of the city built on seven hills; the only city built on ...