Istanbul: The Imperial City - European Travel Books

Paperback - 01 July, 1998 - Penguin (Non-Classics)
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By: John Freely
ISBN: 0140244611

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Reviews by readers

Excelent work!!

In october of this year i'll be visiting Istanbul so i decided to read this book to increase my knowledge of this city and i wasnt dissapointed. I love the authors account of Istanbul since it's beginning.I ilke the way he relates how all the major buildings and monuments in Istanbul came to be and its relation with the person who build them and its relation to the city.I liked the last section which summarises the major monuments and a little bit of it's history.I recommend this book to anyone traveling to Turkey

Interesting

A little too detailed for what I was after, but an excellent history of this wonderful city.

Disappointing...

Having lived in Istanbul for 4 years, I was more interested in finding out more about the Byzantium history since the rest of
it (post 1453); I have studied immensely through out my school years. Unfortunately, Freely did not exceed or even meet my expectations, the book was more like a tourist guide and from what I gather from the reviews, most of the people who gave it a good rating are foreigners who went to Istanbul for vacation and sightseeing..

The historical facts consist mostly of some dates and mere numbers regarding population, mosques and some prominent sultans. There was no satisfactory story telling about the life outside the palace in which it is claimed that 26 different ethnicities were living side by side. Commoners, gypsies, peasants, jugglers, tumblers, thieves, dwarves, horses, elephants were some of the inhabitants that gave Istanbul her true color.

As in several books written with a similar approach, the "harem" in the Topkapi Palace is a whole chapter by itself, yet, the entire chapter is devoted to totally irrelevant history of such and such sultan died and the son became the new sultan and then he was replaced by the next one and so on...

The only plus in this book are the sketches of some arthictectural marvels in the last pages which you do not have to buy the book to be fascinated!

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