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Discovering Istanbul's Big New Digs

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The stunning Hagia Sophia, the vast Topkapi Palace, the rich Grand Bazaar, and the monumental Süleymaniye mosque by the architect Sinan whose genius rivaled Leondardo’s: Istanbul can brag about more than its fair share of splendid sites. The city is so ancient though that major archaelogical finds are still cropping up, as I recently discovered.  

After a brisk morning walk through the recently spruced up Gülhane Park on the grounds of the Topkapi Palace, I arrived at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. Built in the late 19th century by architect Alexander Vallaury, who also designed the city’s historic Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah, several exhibition halls on the campus there cover a crossroads of cultures.  

But I was there for a special discovery. A decade ago, during tunneling for a major new railway connecting the city’s European and Asian sides, workers discovered a silted up harbor at a hub called Yenikapi. The rail project was ultimately delayed for years as traces of a city wall from the Constantine era were slowly revealed. More astonishing, archaeologists ultimately uncovered 36 Byzantine ships that date from the 7th to 10th centuries.

At the museums' temporary Yenikapi exhibit, an archaelogist told me that under the watch of fifty experts, 600 workers worked around the clock for over five years and filled an average of 500 boxes daily from the dig. The ships, made from oak, chestnut and pine, held thousands of items, from intact clay amphorae that held wine and oil, to gold coins, fruits, seeds and animal bones. 

The Yenikapi rail station finally opened last year, and at the Venice Biennale renowned architect Peter Eisenman revealed his vision for a future Yenikapi Project to highlight the treasures. 

After my Yenikapi visit, I wandered down the famous pedestrian Pera Street, whose historic facades are getting modernized as happens, alas, in every major city. In the Cihangir area, I sat on the outside terrace of Kahvedan cafe for, what else, bold Turkish coffee and Turkey’s insanely delicious traditional simit bread rings that are overflowing with sesame seeds on the outside. 

The area is home to antique shops, new boutique hotels, and Nobel prize laureate Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. I hadn't finished his massive novel of the same name, but it doesn’t matter; this is arguably one of the funkiest and fun museums around as it chronicles several decades of Turkish upper-class life as well as any traditional non-fictional museum could. Across the street, Kare Parchment is a small studio shop that specializes in all manner of products made from parchment, a fun link to the ancient world even if their handbags are of modern high design.

In the nearby Karaköy district which is at once historic and absolutely up-and-coming of late, the five-year-old Lokanta Maya is a minimalist restaurant in which one wall is cleverly designed in walnut shells. Chef Didem Şenol, who earned her culinary stripes in New York, writes popular cookbooks as well. Her mezes are superb, but her squash fritters with egg, dill, parsley and red onion are a massive hit. Over lunch, I discovered the Aegean winery Pendore’s red vintage made from Öküzgözü grapes, whose diacritic-rich name I was told means ox eye.

Continuing the theme of new archaeological discoveries, I visited the Hellenistic-Roman harbor city of Bathonea which was only excavated in the last few years. In the 12th-century, the then Byzantine harbor city a dozen miles west of Istanbul was finished off by an earthquake that buried nine miles worth of wall foundations under Lake Küçükçekmece, which in antiquity was an inlet on the Marmara Sea. In addition to Neolithic stone tools, the first Hittite figurines ever found in Europe were excavated here. Ongoing digs show the site to be of ever greater size and many more artifacts are expected to lie under the murky waters.

Back to modernity, I dined at Gile, a smallish restaurant across from the W hotel in Beşiktaş, and located in one of the Akaretler Row Houses that date from 1875, and which were revitalized in the late 2000s with art galleries, boutiques, and cafes and restaurants. Filled with original modern art that is exhibited on a revolving basis, Gile was opened just two years ago by well-known chefs Cihan Kipçak and Üryan Doğmuş, who will surprise you with innovative takes on lamb and seafood.

Kempinksi’s legendary Çirağan Palace hotel has balconies that open right onto the Boshphorus whose constant stream of ships and boats provide pure entertainment. It also serves perhaps the richest breakfast spread of western and Mediterranean goodies that I have ever seen. The cuisine in the hotel’s Ottoman-themed Tuğra restaurant follows traditional Ottoman styles in its lamb and other dishes. Dinner on its balcony is just the place to sit back after an Istanbul archaeology tour and wonder what other treasures still lie undiscovered in the waters just below you.

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