Turkish Delights

Byzantine and Ottoman inspiration and language has enriched our culture in many ways: from coffee, croissants, divans, slippers, silks, turbans, tiles and carpets to tents, harems and the language of flowers - all deriving from that legendary city known in turn as Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul.

The allure of ancient Byzantium was popularly fashioned by the fertile imagination of many an author including Graham Greene (‘Stamboul Train’) and Agatha Christie (‘Murder on the Orient Express’) and it was of course George Naglemackers’s plush Pullman train, later to be dubbed the ‘Orient Express’ that was to be the main setting for these tales of high-class courtesans, seductive spies, secret messengers and assassins.

In an earlier period, Mozart was to transport his creative mind to the Topkapi Palace with ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’ (Flight from the Harem) and the silver screen gave us ‘Topkapi’ which told of the theft of the emerald dagger from the Topkapi Palace Treasury. It is still on display in the Palace Treasury, which also displays the 86-carat Spoonmaker diamond, the gold-plated Bayram throne and bejewelled aigrettes for the imperial turban. The harem (Arabic for ‘Forbidden’) is a labyrinth of brilliantly tiled 16th-century chambers, which includes the Paired Pavilions, Dining Room of Ahmet III, Imperial Hall and Harem Baths. The Bosphorus cruise excursion encompasses a greater part of this 30-km waterway separating Asia and Europe and passes the Dolmabahçe and Beylerbeyi palaces, the 15th-century Rumeli and Anatolian castles guarding the narrowest points of the European and Asian shoreline, mosques and wooden Ottoman houses.

Special VJV Event - Ottoman Dinner
A drink in a typical Ottoman house followed by a candlelit dinner in the vaulted dining room of an ancient 6th-century cistern.