Jeffrey Sipprell

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November 18, 2005

Istanbul - Day 1, Part 2

Continuing on through the first day, we left the Hagia Sophia for lunch and were introduced to Turkish meatballs - basically slabs of lamb, or perhaps mutton, that were slathered in greasy batter. It's almost mcnuggety, but goes down smooth with rice and beans. With our stomachs full, we sauntered off to the Blue Mosque which is immediately adjacent to the Hagia Sophia. However, as the Blue Mosque is a real mosque, and not a museum like the H.S., we had to detour while prayers were taking place to a turkish bath by Sinan, the architect. I'll post more on this guy later, but he's considered by ALL to be the greatest turkish architect ever (needless to say he built many a mosque in his day). Tomorrow we'll take a look at one of his masterpieces.

In the meantime, the turkish bath had been converted to a carpet emporium of sorts so we walked through snapping pictures admiring the domework in a few rooms and getting our first look at a Stalagtite.

With half an hour now killed we headed back to the Blue Mosque, took off our shoes (a must at all mosques), and headed inside. It's quite an overpowering space, though way too ornamental for my tastes (I prefer the simplicity of the Hagia Sophia and some of the mosques you'll see in the coming days). But it's the first case where we got to see a Mosque that was bilaterally symmetrical - 4 half domes coming from all 4 sides support the larger dome. Each of these half domes is then supported by 3 half dome squinches and some stalagtites to get it back to a flat wall condition.

The surfaces are treated a lot tauter than they are in the Hagia Sophia - there isn't much of the same layered depth that we saw there, but there are a few conditions along the side where you get some spatial depth. But otherwise it's a pretty homogenously ornamented central space (some quite nice ceramic work).

The outside massing is a bit richer in terms of the way it builds up to the main dome. There's a bit more depth in the facade between the buttressing that begins to give the structure a bit more spatial thickness. Definitely my least favorite of the big mosques that we saw, so expect better things from me in the coming days.

Posted by jsipprell at November 18, 2005 1:48 AM

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