I spent some of my "brownie points" with Keith and Renee and our local guides, and broke off from the group to visit this mosque. It was high on my "to see" list when I went to Istanbul in 2009, but in 2009 when I got there... literally, "there" to the mosque... I found the heart of it closed for restoration. (I was able to enjoy a good visit to the interesting cemetery. Cemetery closed when I visited in 2012!)
Sadly, at the time Tauck was planning our excellently integrated and paced programme, opening times were still uncertain, as some restoration continues. But for the flexibility of Keith, Renee, and others, it would have been a huge disappointment to not at least try to visit. In fact, I had affixed the following image of a small part of the door to the mosque, from my 2009 trip, to the cover of my trip notebook!.....
Most of the door was, in 2009, caked with years of accumulated varnish, rendering it an unappealing brown. Clean, by the way... everything in Istanbul was clean... but occluded. Apart from the bit I've photographed, where someone apparently took a solvent, and cleaned a bit of the decorative strip along the side of the panel, and one of the ivory inlays.
That decorative strip... I saw similar at the Topkapi palace... was made of hundreds and hundreds of sandwiched tiny strips of woods of different colors.
The next picture shows the door the above detail comes from. The detail shows about 5" of one edge of one panel of one door... The cleaned area is just to the right of the man's shoulder. Go back to the first picture and try to imagine what it took to make just the decorative strip on one of the doors in this vast mosque where everything was done as exquisitely. And then multiply that up.... See why I enjoy travel?
Well, I'm delighted to be able to report that this time, 2012, I was able to visit the inside of the Suleymaniye mosque. And, just before we "go there", here is the same bit of door, after restoration. Notice the very subtle indication of the provenance of the two new pieces in the geometric pattern border?
And, sorry, I can't resist just one more. It shows about 1" of the height of the art in the door. Try making some of that geometric patterned border, why don't you? Then we will look at other parts of the mosque!
I will expand upon the following later. For now? A mosque is often more than the space we tourists photograph. Said space marked with yellow circle. (Door, by the way, a little outside "8 o'clock" on the circle.) The excellent Wikimapia will tell you about the parts of what you see.
Wikipedia article on Suleymaniye Mosque.
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Don't forget... this page is just a "dumping spot" for images on their way to a "final home". Go back to the main page for my tour with Tauck, Athens to Istanbul, for other "dumping spot" pages, and, eventually, "proper" pages for the different parts of the trip.
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