ISTANBUL, CONSTANTINOPLE, BYZANTIUM...

The Sultan Ahmet Camii in Istanbul

The Grandma has arrived to Istanbul on The Orient Express although she has decided to not visit the city. She's reading the travel guide and she wants to know about the different names of this historic city.

Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait, which separates Europe and Asia, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side.

More information: Istanbul by Lonely Planet

The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub can be found across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district.

The first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.

After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinopolis, which, as the Latinized form of Konstantinoúpolis, means the City of Constantine. 

More information: Historic Areas of Istanbul, UNESCO

The Maiden Tower in Istanbul

By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul, as the Turks also did, to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.  

Pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu, today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts. Islambol, meaning either City of Islam or Full of Islam was sometimes colloquially used to refer to the city, and was even engraved on some Ottoman coins, but the belief that it was the precursor to the present name, İstanbul, is belied by the fact that the latter existed well before the former and even predates the Ottoman conquest of the city.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

 Christian Louboutin

POIROT & THE GRANDMA ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Poster of The Orient Express

Autumn is here and The Grandma has decided to go on holiday. As you know, she doesn't like crowds and this is the main reason because of she prefers travelling in this season.

She wants to stay some months travelling around Europe and Asia and she has chosen The Orient Express, the famous train. 

First of all, The Grandma has arrived to Milan where she's going to take this historic train accompanied by an old friend Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective.

Let's go to join them in this unforgettable experience...

The Orient Express was the name of a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL).

The original route, which first ran on October 4, 1883, was from Paris, Gare de l'Est, to Giurgiu in Romania via Munich and Vienna. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Danube to Ruse, Bulgaria, to pick up another train to Varna. They then completed their journey to Constantinople by ferry.

The route and rolling stock of The Orient Express changed many times. Several routes in the past concurrently used The Orient Express name, or slight variants thereof. Although the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, the name has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel. The two city names most prominently associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Constantinople (Istanbul), the original endpoints of the timetabled service.

More information: Venice Simplon-Orient Express

The Orient Express was a showcase of luxury and comfort at a time when travelling was still rough and dangerous. CIWL soon developed a dense network of luxury trains all over Europe, whose names are still remembered today and associated with the art of luxury travel – The Blue Train, The Golden Arrow, North Express and many more.

Schedule of The Orient Express

In 1977, The Orient Express stopped serving Istanbul. Its immediate successor, a through overnight service from Paris to Vienna, ran for the last time from Paris on Friday, June 8, 2007.

After this, the route, still called The Orient Express, was shortened to start from Strasbourg instead, occasioned by the inauguration of the LGV Est which affords much shorter travel times from Paris to Strasbourg. The new curtailed service left Strasbourg at 22:20 daily, shortly after the arrival of a TGV from Paris, and was attached at Karlsruhe to the overnight sleeper service from Amsterdam to Vienna.

On 14 December 2009, The Orient Express ceased to operate and the route disappeared from European railway timetables, reportedly a victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines. The Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, a private venture by Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. using original CIWL carriages from the 1920s and 1930s, continues to run from London to Venice and to other destinations in Europe, including the original route from Paris to Istanbul.

In March 2014 Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. was renamed Belmond.

Download Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Who knows who will be on board? A couple of spies, for sure. At least one grand duke; a few beautiful woman, no doubt very rich and very troubled. Anything can happen and usually does on the Orient Express.
 

Morley Safer

TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1204: THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Fourth Crusade: The fall of Constantinople

While many Western countries believe that Friday the 13th is an ominous day, it is Tuesday the 13th that Greeks, like the most part of Mediterranean countries, fear the most. Misfortune and calamity struck with the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade on Tuesday, April 13, 1204 paving the way for the Fall of the city to the Ottomans many Tuesdays later on Tuesday, May 29, 1453.

Add the numbers, however 1+4+5+3 and you get the full sum of 13. Coincidence? Greeks don’t think so!

Wait, there’s more…

The Greek word for Tuesday (Triti) means “Third”, adding weight to the superstition that bad luck comes in threes. Tuesdays are also viewed as being dominated by the influence of Mars, the god of war.

As for 13, Greeks believe that it spoils the perfection of 12 e.g. the 12 Greek gods, 12 months, 12 hours of the day and 12 hours of the night, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 signs of the zodiac etc. In fact, Philip II of Macedon died shortly after he erected his own statue next to those of the 12 Olympian gods.

In Christianity, the 13th chapter of the Revelation is the one that brings up the coming of the Antichrist.

As you know, The Grandma is battling against the Antichrist. The fight continues and nothing better than two new chapters about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a terrorific story to take energy. 

So today, beware, there’s evil lurking everywhere!

During the crusades all were religious mad,

and now all are mad for want of it.

J.G.Stedman