Tonight I am watching Rise of Empires on the History Channel so am thinking of Istanbul.

Of course they are covering a time where the city is known as Constantinople.

Since I am busy watching the show I am mainly just sharing some pictures from my visit years ago to Istanbul.

One of the places we visited was the Blue Mosque. The interior of the building was absolutely beautiful.

The proper name of the Blue Mosque is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque.

You can see in the picture that the Blue Mosque has six minarets. There are only two mosques in Turkey with six minarets . You can see the other one in my post: A Day in Tarsus

We also visited the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The museum was under reconstruction, and we did not get to see everything we wanted to.

I guess this is one good reason to take another trip to Istanbul some day.

I did enjoy seeing this lion from the Procession street that leads from the Ishtar gate in Babylon.

There were also some very interesting sarcophagi on display. This picture shows some of the detail of the Alexander Sarcophagus. Although the sarcophagus shows scenes from the life of Alexander the Great, it is not where he was buried. The sarcophagus was the final resting place of King Abdalonymos of Sidon. Abdalonymos was made king by Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great has already been mentioned a few times in the show tonight.

The Hagia Sofia is a very impressive building. Originally built as a church it is now a mosque. This building has also been mentioned in the series tonight.

When we visited Istanbul Hagia Sofia was a museum and retained features of both the church and mosque.

The show tonight is very interesting and one of the things I am enjoying are the depictions of the siege of Constantinople. The large cannons and bombards that were used were huge.

I probably should have waited until after the show to write this, but they are showing three one hour episodes which don’t get over until late.

Commercial is over, so back to the show.

Steven