All of Turkey [antikvár]

The church of Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, seen from above.INTRODUCTIONGeographically Turkey is a sort of gravitational center between the West and the East, a point of junction be-tween Continental and peninsular Europe and the im-mense mass of the Afro-Asian continent. From the dawn of civilization this age-old land has been a sort of symptomatic indicator in the complex delicate mechanism of the precarious states of equilibrium which existed on the shores of the Mediterranean. Tourist literature often uses the terms "land of con-trasts" and "Gate to the Orient" when speaking of Turkey, and while these phrases have a measure of truth to them, they are little compared with what the modern state of Turkey really is an immense Container of art, history and culture. Stretching out towards the Mediterranean in the direction of the Con-tinental mass of Europe from which it is separated by the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, modern-day Turkey offers the tourist the picturesqueness of its en-chanted shores, the spell and seduction of Istanbul (ancient ConstantinopleJ, treasures of art and nature in Cappadocia, the marvels of Pamukkale, the mys-tery of Nemrud Dag and the boundless silences of Mount Ararat.What once went by the name of Asia Minor offers an inexhaustible variety of things to see in the fields of art and architecture, ranging from the remains of the ancient Hittite and Urartean civilizations, to the archaeo-logical ruins of the Hellenistic period, the remains of the Román past, the manifest vestiges of the Christian-Byzantine age, and the manifestations of Seljuk and