Golden Horn and Historic Peninsula

“I am neither within time, / Nor wholly outside it…” says Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. Whenever I read these lines, the Historic Peninsula comes to mind. Walking inside the city walls, you feel neither fully within time nor wholly outside it; one step lands on Byzantine mosaics, the next on Ottoman domes, and when you raise your head you meet the eyes of today’s seagulls…