Turkey

Most travelers enter Turkey by air at Istanbul, one of the most interesting cities in the world. Visitors gravitate to the Golden Horn and the Topkapi Museum, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome and marvelous Archaeological Museum. A must for all visitors is the Sultan's quarters with their adjacent Harem. Istanbul is a city full of memories made solid: the Karije Camii with its fabulous decorations, Yedikule with its prisoners' cells so claustrophobic as to be scary even today, and the wall of Constantine.

Edirne, at the northwest corner of European Turkey is a city of great mosques. The Aegean coast is filled with ancient Greek archaeological sites, some like Pergamum and Ephesus remains of once prosperous cities.

Inland Turkey is the land of the ancient Hittites and Lydians: Bogazkale and Sardis the two best known sites. Ankara, the capitol, is a busy, modern city with many memorials to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. It has as well a Byzantine citadel, a marvelous near eastern museum, and the wall of a Roman temple on which is inscribed Augustus Caesar's Deeds in Greek and Latin. To the east is Ani and the ruined cities of Armenia and Mt. Ararat; to the south Diyarbakir with its stark medieval walls.