FIRST TRIP TO ISTANBUL

YOUR FIRST TRIP TO ISTANBUL

If it is the first time that you make a trip to the City of the cities, you are agreeably surprised by Istanbul. Street by street, it is a meeting with the history. The history of European continent of course, but also the history with a big H, the History of our culture, that which starts with the Hittites, the Hellenics, the Gallic tributes, the Romans or Byzantines and the Ottomans.
For well understanding the City, it would be necessary to learn a little more the history, that what is generally taught in the schools of Western Europe. It would be necessary to remember the origins of Dario Moreno or Alice Sapritch. Remember Mayerling and the constantinopolitan mistress of Rudolf de Habsbourg. Remember the origins of the members of French government, like Edouard Balladur or Françoise Giroud. Remember too from where came Aristote Onassis, Henri Langlois or Calouste Gülbenkian ...
We will not go so far, because this website does havent the historical vocation. We add only that: if Europe were to have a capital, that would be incontestably Istanbul.

As certain cheap tourist guides say it, Istanbul is not between Orient and Occident. It is simply a city of Eastern Europe and Turkey is a country to form part of it. The role of Istanbul is not national, because culturally and economically, the City drains a dynamism which being itself in all the countries neighbourhood, to the heart of Balkans and to the Caucasus.

The city is mainly Moslem and curiosly, these subject intrigue certain Europeans. But, Istanbul is the capital of the orthodoxe world, too. The patriarchate is installed there since the night of times and under the Ottoman Empire, it had an essential role in all Eastern Europe.

The City is always very cosmopolitan and, in the streets of the metropolis of the Bosphorus, you can see the gipsie women with "décolté" or the women with black "tcharchaf". You can see too : the high-school girls with miniskirt, the old men with the kippa, the catholic nones and the orthodoxe priests, the transvestites with stiletto heels, the bisnessmen with costume and tie, the secretaries with tailor or a Kurdish agha : Istanbul is a city-world !
...and the city of the tolerence...

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