Did I mention how clean Istanbul was? Here's the reason why:
This morning we spied several of these little street-cleaning machines. It looked like a miniature zamboni. It scrubbed the sidewalks and parking lots and sucked up any trash.
Our first stop of the day was the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. We got there right when it opened. We practically had the place to ourselves.The museum is actually three different buildings covered by the same ticket. This was the main building.
The museum contained an interesting array of sarcophagi. The most impressive was the so-called "Alexander Sarcophagus". It may have a couple carvings of Alexander the Great on the outside, but it was actually King Abdalonymos of Sidon who had been laid to rest on the inside.
They did a great job displaying statues. Here's one of Apollo playing a lyre. Just an ordinary statue, right?
Well, the curators were quite clever. They would take a photo of fine details, greatly magnify it, and then hang the picture on the wall. It made visitors pay more attention because you would search out which piece in the room the photo belonged to.For example, they would show these intricately carved sandals. Then you would look at all the feet on the statues in the room until you discovered they were on Apollo playing a lyre.
Now tell me you didn't scroll up to see the picture of Apollo again. You see? It works!This is another self-portrait.
The trays behind us contain thousands (perhaps millions) of shards of broken pottery just waiting to be reassembled. Each tray was marked with a code (presumably some sort of catalog system). They served as the ceiling to the children's museum below.
Tucked away in the basement were some very fine mosaics. They had a floor mosaic (not for walking, just for viewing) that was just amazing. Each piece of tile was less than the size of a pea. And this photo represents perhaps one-fiftieth of the whole.The museum seemed to go on forever. We could have spent days in there reading about each thing.
We eventually said goodbye to the main building. There were two more buildings yet to see!
