More Pictures from Turkey

Here are some more pictures from our Turkey trip upon request.  (That means you Mom.)

 Another view of the Trojan horse at Troy.  You could go up inside of it and see out the little windows on the sides.

 Some of the ruins of Troy you can see when you first walk in.

 This is where the city gates of Troy would have been.

 More ruins of Troy.

 This picture and the one below are the oldest remains they have found of the city Troy.  It is made out of mud bricks instead of stone.  There was a canopy to cover it from rain so that it doesn't disintegrate.

 This trench is where most of the artifacts from Troy were found.  They are all in museums now, so we didn't get to see any of it.  The archaeologist that found this trench with the artifacts claimed that it was Priam's treasury that was talked about in the Iliad.  Who knows if that's really true though?

 Our group coming up from looking at the ramp that the Trojan horse might have been taken up on.  So everyone looks like they are listening to their iPod.  But the latest in touring technology is to have your tour guide talk into a microphone and you have a receiver that you plug headphones into so you can hear your tour guide without them having to yell.  It's pretty handy.  We use receivers on all of our field trips.

 Me in the Odeon (a place for lectures) at Troy.  The reconstructed stage is on the right.

 More of the Odeon at Troy.

 More ruins of Troy.

 Some of the Turkish countryside from the lookout at Assos.  We went there the day after Troy.

 The reconstructed gate of Constantine's palace at Nicea.  There wasn't much to this palace.  There were just a few walls with this gate, and it is all pretty much reconstructed.

 The rest of these are all pictures of the Hagia Sofia Church (now a museum) in Istanbul.  All of these mosaics are made out of thousands of pieces of tile.

 The inside of the roof.  These are also mosaics, along with paint.

 The flying buttresses on the outside of the Hagia Sophia.

 The doors into the church.  These used to be crosses, but when the Muslims converted it into a mosque, they took part of the cross off.  You can still see where the line going across used to be though.

 Another mosaic.  All of the mosaics were originally covered up by plaster when it was converted into a mosque because Muslims don't believe in having images in their sanctuaries.  This actually preserved the mosaics quite nicely, so they are all in pretty good condition still.

 There was all this scaffolding on the left side of the church because they are doing some kind of restoration project there right now.  This is the knave of the church.

 Largest dome of the church.  It's actually not a perfect circle.  You can kind of tell in the picture.  The yellow paint with white is what they kept from the mosque decorations.

 A view to the aisles of the church.

 These are the way that Muslims decorate their mosques.  They use calligraphy.  The one of the left is the name of the prophet Mohammad, and the one on the right is the name of Allah (God).

 The walls were completely made of marble.  You can see that this piece of marble was taken from the same slab of marble because one side is a reflection of the other.

 One of the decorative columns in the church.  Everything was very elaborate like this.

 This is the podium that the Imam of the mosque would stand on to do the prayers each day.  This is a very ornate one.  They are not usually this fancy.

 The virgin Mary and Christ.  This is the main mosaic in the apse of the church.

 Another view of the mosaic and the mehrab in the apse of the church.

 This is the mehrab.  Each mosque has one.  It is a niche carved out of the wall to let people know which direction to face so that they can pray towards Mecca.

 This is where the Sultan and his family would have their prayers.  It's their own separate box, kind of like at an opera house.

 A view of the church from the second floor.  This was the largest church in the world for 1000 years.

 These are depictions of saints on the walls facing one of the aisles that can be seen from the knave of the church.

 More mosaics in the church on the second floor.  They all have Christ in them, and some have the emperor Justinian because he is the one that built the church during the Byzantine period and to legitimize himself as the emperor.

A better view of the mosaic in the apse of the church.