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Ancient treasures on a tight budget
Travelers find Turkey's mosques, bazaars and beaches appealing -- and affordable
(CNN) -- From Mount Ararat in the east -- which the Old Testament cites as the final resting place of Noah's ark -- to the warm beaches of the south and west, travel experts say Turkey is one of the world's best vacation values.
With decent hotel rooms available at less than US$30 a night, and a 10-course meal of appetizers (meze) at about the price of a fast food lunch back across the Atlantic, a great bargain is usually just a street corner away.
Turkey's largest city -- the region's capital for a span of almost 1,600 years -- is the only major city in the world resting in two continents. Istanbul's European and Asian sections are separated by the Bosporus Straight, which joins the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) moved the capital to Ankara in 1923, but Istanbul remains Turkey's commercial and cultural center. At the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Bazaar, tourists and locals haggle over prices in a colorful maze of carpets, spices and gold.
Tumultuous history
Istanbul -- first named Byzantium and then Constantinople -- was chosen as capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Roman emperor Constantine I in 324, almost a thousand years after its founding. The city was the centerpiece in political tugs-of-war for centuries, as Persians, Arabs, nomads, and Crusading Christians battled for its prime location.
One of the city's most beloved treasures, the Aya Sofya, was born from one destructive sequence. After riots left much of Constantinople in ruin, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I built the magnificent church in 537, decorating it with extraordinary Byzantine mosaics. Aya Sofya was Constantinople's cathedral for 900 years, and then the city's main mosque following the 1453 Ottoman conquest. It was converted to a museum in 1935.
See the sights! 700k/32 sec. QuickTime Slideshow
Opposite Aya Sofya is the Sultanahmet Cami (the Blue Mosque), built by Sultan Ahmet I in an attempt to trump Justinian. The mosque, with its six elegant minarets, is open to the public. Nearby is an ancient Hippodrome -- the largest such arena built by the Greeks for horse and chariot races -- and the 16th century Ibrahim Pasa Palace, which houses Turkish and Islamic art.
Istanbul's oldest mosque, the Beyazit, adjoins the older section of the Grand Bazaar, and its grandest mosque, the Suleymaniye, features an elaborate mausoleum -- built for Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and his wife.
Away from the city
Inside Turkish Asia, nature has forged mysterious creations. Calcium-rich springs in Pamukkale -- the ancient Greek Hierapolis -- have built a cascade of white pools and stalactites called "cotton castles." Westward, across the mountains, the coastal city of Bodrum boasts the remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Resorts at Bodrum and Kusadasi call tourists to wonderful beaches -- with fewer visitors than the better-known Greek isles just a few miles away in the Aegean Sea. The region is home to another of the ancient world's seven wonders -- the Temple of Artemis at Seljuk -- although little remains of the site.
About 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Ankara, Turkey's capital, lie the ruins of another capital. Hattusas was the center of the region for the Hittites -- Turkey's first recorded inhabitants -- around 2200 B.C. The tunnel that served as the gate through the city's protective wall and an open-air temple are among the sites open to visitors for an entry fee of just a few dollars.
In the many centuries since the Hittites, a slew of legendary empires have claimed this land -- Persian, Roman, Mongol and Ottoman.... Like Turkey's history, its religious traditions -- from ancient Christian to majority Muslim -- are carved deep into its cultural landscape. It is the contrast of sacred and secular, of past and present that makes Turkey a fascinating crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.
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