Imagine Istanbul

The Ortaköy Mosque in the district of Ortaköy stands gracefully at the edge of the Bosphorus. It is my favorite mosque in Istanbul perhaps because I find it to be the most prettiest and with its white ornate structure, it possesses a kind of feminine loveliness. I always loved walking around Ortaköy, browsing through the market stalls and shops, listening to music, sitting in cafés and people watching.

And Ortaköy is the place where the little boy of Istanbul and I came in a yellow taxi driven by the Turkish Benicio del Toro (well, the taxi driver looked and acted in the cool manner of this actor, so I gave the character the nickname “the Turkish Benicio del Toro”)to buy sunglasses and pretty jewelery together. I like to give the characters in my story nicknames as you can see by the list of characters on the right hand side under the list of Characters. Because every human being has a story, some are of tragedy, some are of joy, and all stories are a journey to knowledge of the self.

The Ortaköy Mosque was built by the architect Nikoğos Balyan in 1854 to 1855 for the Sultan Abdülmecid Khan. The sultans would come by boat to worship here when they stayed at the Beylerbeyi Summer Palace. How lucky were the Sultans to live in such beautiful palaces, worship in such magnificent places and live in the city of Istanbul, once known as Constantinople.

You can view other photographs of the Mosque at Ortaköy in my posting on this blog entitled The Fishermen of Istanbul, but this one shows a different view of the mosque with the ornate white iron fence in the front of the building.

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