Blue Guide Istanbul

by John Freely

Book Overview

With its rich architectural heritage, Istanbul is one of the world's most beautiful cities. All of its monuments, including the Haghia Sophia, Topkapi Sarayi, and the Covered Bazaar, are covered in a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393317463
• ISBN13: 9780393317466
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: A&C Black
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.8" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

A Guide for Big Boys and Girls

I lived and worked in Ankara for three years, and used this guide and its predecessor every time I visited Istanbul. If you want to get off the beaten track, or if you really want to understand what you're looking at, this is the guide for you. If you want something glossy and light, as some of the other reviewers seemed to have wanted, this isn't for you. It's an in-depth guide, meant for people who are interested in culture, history, and architecture. It's not a picture book, nor is it designed to let you plan where you'll stay or where you'll eat, though it does provide limited, good recommendations. In one year I'm returning to Turkey to live in Istanbul for four years. I'll be taking this guide with me to explore what I didn't get to see before, and I'll be sure to snap up a revised edition when it comes up for sale. I've lived overseas and have used other Blue Guides in depth -- Ireland, England, Scotland, Greece, and China -- this Blue Guide, as well as Blue Guide Turkey, is every bit the equal of the others. In fact, I think it's better.

Heavy stuff

This is the detailed guide for someone with a fairly long stay in Istanbul and a serious interest in art and history. Compared with the Lonely Planet Istanbul it's not as readable and has less practical "how to get there" and "where to stay" information but it's usful once you're in a particular building and want to know more about it. Sometimes it tells you more than you want to know but it seldom tells less.

The most accurate and detailed guidebook

We used this book on our trip to Istanbul last week, and it was I was intimidated at first by all the historic detail, but I found this book better than any guide you could hire to navigate through millenia of history on the shores of the Bosphorus. It walks you through the sites, and gives the historic context for each. Very informative.It has a nice list of sites not to be missed in the front, in case your trip is brief, as was ours.I will always travel with this brand of book in the future. They recruit actual scholars of the area to do much of the writing.

Great help for the first timer

My wife and I just returned from our trip to Istanbul. The Blue Guide was like having our own guide. Often, when reading portions to her, some other English speaking folks wandered up to and asked "say that again." On our cruise up the Bosphorus, it made the villages, the castles, palaces some alive. This is my second Blue Guide (the first was on Vienna)purchase and they will become a part of our travelling "necessities."

An indispensable guide to the world's most fascinating city

Modern-day Istanbul -- crowded, dirty and noisy, but with a dazzling beauty all its own -- is the sum of twenty-seven centuries of history, and no guidebook captures the city in all its glory better than this one. It's almost a street-by-street history of the city, indispensable for the independent-minded traveler who really wants to know the place. Wandering around with this book in hand (or even getting lost, which I've done more than once) is pure joy. My own copy of the previous edition is showing the strains of four separate trips to Istanbul -- it's flecked with bits of pistachio shells, the cover is stained from having too many glasses of raki set on it, and several pages have buckled from splashes on the Bosphorus ferries -- but I'll never get rid of it.John Freely's erudition is amazing, but never pretentious. His histories in this book of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires are the best short accounts of those civilizations I've encountered anywhere. He also emphasizes historical sites that other guidebooks seem to overlook, such as the Kariye Camii mosaics, the Yerebatan Saray (underground cistern) and SS. Sergius and Bacchus Church, all of which are absolute gems little visited by tourists. I can't imagine the amount of research that went into the writing of this book. At last count I owned twenty-four of the Blue Guides. All are excellent, but this is my favorite. There is simply no better guide to Istanbul. I hope that Freely's "Istanbul: The Imperial City," which I have just purchased, is as good.