Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Next to the southern entrance is a bulbous little kiosk built into the park wall. Known as
the periodic parades of troops and trade guilds that commemorated great holidays and mil-
itary victories. It is now the İstanbul headquarters of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Across the street and 100m northwest of the park's main gate is an outrageously curva-
ceous rococo gate leading into the precincts of what was once the grand vizierate, or Otto-
buildings beyond the gate hold various offices of the İstanbul provincial government (the
Vilayeti).
HIPPIE HIPPIE SHAKE
Plenty of monuments in Sultanahmet evoke the city's Byzantine and Ottoman past, but there are few
traces of an equally colourful but much more recent period in the city's history - the hippie era of the
1960s and 1970s. Back then, the first wave of Intrepids (young travellers following the overland trail
from Europe to Asia) descended upon İstanbul and can be said to have played a significant role in
the Europeanisation of Turkey. The Intrepids didn't travel with itineraries, tour guides or North Face
travel gear - their baggage embodied a rejection of materialism, a fervent belief in the power of love
and a commitment to the journey rather than the destination. All that was leavened with liberal doses
of drugs, sex and protest music, of course.
Sultanahmet had three central hippie hang-outs in those days: the Gülhane Hostel (now closed); a
cafe run by Sitki Yener, the 'King of the Hippies' (now a leather shop on İnciliçavuş Sokak); and the
Sultanahmet) on Divan Yolu, known to hippies the world over as the Pudding Shop. Sadly, this
retains few if any echoes of its counterculture past these days, substituting bland food in place of its
former menu of psychedelic music and chillums of hash.
To evoke those days, we highly recommend Rory Maclean's
Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from
Istanbul to India
, a thought-provoking and wonderfully written history/travelogue.
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