![]() This is the distinctive lure of Turkey: It truly is a global crossroad. Tiger Woods has putt a golf ball from Asia to Europe, tennis star Venus Williams has smashed a ball across the bridge, and a café here has an arrow marker pointing to “Europe” and “Asia” on opposite sides. Whatever it is has made Istanbul’s Bosphorus quite the tourism magnet. This divide is more metaphorical, more ideological than literal and geological. Unlike other continental divides, however, there is no “line” to separate Asia and Europe, no tectonic plate, no identifiable chasm, not around the Bosphorus or the Black Sea on either side. Many tourists go on the cruise for the specific experience of being able to say one has been to both Asia and Europe, to be in two places at once. There’s a very thin veil that exists between the past and present, and in the many dichotomies that define the identity of a country so legendary.ĪS OLD AS TIME The ancient city of Ephesus’ excavated remains tell centuries worth of history, from classical Greece to the Roman Empire and beyond Like most historic places, like Rome or Athens or Cairo, places deeply imprinted with both tragic and victorious stories of humanity, a certain melancholic mood prevails over much of Turkey. Devotees believe this is where she spent her last days, and where the Virgin may have assumed into heaven. In the ancient city of Ephesus, in the Central Aegean region, where Paul the Apostle once traveled and stayed for three years, is where the home of the Virgin Mary still stands. Peter, a cave carved in a mountainside at Mount Starius, is the oldest place of Christian worship in the world, believed to have been founded by Simon Peter. Turkey is an important country for Catholics, with the first ever Christian church historically located in Antioch (now called Antakya), where followers of Jesus were first called “Christians.” The Grotto of St. The Urfa Man, the oldest sculpture of a life-sized human, dates back 9000 BC. The Gobekle Tepi, site of the oldest known man-made religious structures, has ruins dating back 10,000 BC, predating the much more famous Stonehenge by at least seven millennia. TEST OF TIME This ancient obelisk has stood the test of time, built between 14 BC Turkey is so ancient that many linguistic scholars and anthropologists have concluded that the Indo-European languages may have been birthed in this Anatolian peninsula. ![]() In olden times, this meant it was at the epicenter of the world’s greatest empires, the Byzantine, Greek, Persian, Roman, and the Ottoman, bearing witness to their rise and fall. In modern times, this has put the country at the crosshairs of warring superpower neighbors. None, for sure, that can top its geographic location, which has made it one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Turkey is overwhelmingly beautiful, as are so many places in the world, but there’s probably very few which can match its mystical allure and its place in the pages of our civilization’s history. THIS IS TROY This is the ancient setting of the Trojan War, and is now a modern cityĮven the most highly itinerant come here to tick items off their bucket list in one fell swoop: Visit the cradle of Christianity, be in two places at once, walk cobblestone streets where gods and goddesses have purportedly once walked, marvel at geological wonders unseen anywhere else, or be at the crossroads of history where the world’s most powerful empires began and ended-name it, Turkey has it.
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