Welcome Aboard Common Sense: Istanbul

Imagine a city that contains the whole population of Australia, concentrated on seven hills and spanning one of the world's major waterways, straddling Europe and Asia. Over the last couple of thousand years, it has been the centre of three empires, as Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul, centre of the Ottoman Empire. Apparently Istanbul has been in a state of decay and decline since the fall of the Ottomans, particularly when Ataturk decided to shift the capital to Ankara to break with the past. The writer Orhan Pamuk says the city's mood is "huzun", a kind of collective melancholy resulting from the awareness that one's days of greatness and beauty are all in the past. He says that Istanbulus cannot avoid daily contrasts between the remnants of empire and the ugly realities of the modern city. He was writing a decade ago, however, and for us the city seemed to be full of energy and life, with those glimpses of the past serving to deepen and enrich the experience of walking around the broad streets and steep narrow laneways of the city. You wander down a busy shopping street, for example, and nestled between a phone store and a boutique is a tiny old cemetery, its seven graveposts topped with stone turbans. The man with his golden shoe-shine stand, the simit seller and the sardine fishermen on the Galata Bridge have been there in some form or other for hundreds of years. Great monuments and museums, as well as bazaars, galleries, shops, gardens, restaurants and everything else you can think of, make this Turkey's social and cultural capital, even if the politicking happens in Ankara.

A popular T shirt slogan says "Istanbul: you call it chaos - we call it home". And for an outsider, particularly one from a small town, the chaos reigns supreme. Peak hour is something to behold, with buses, dolmuses, taxis, ferries, cars, bikes, pedestrians and even the odd brave horse and cart engaged in deadly combat, with sound effects. Yet it all works, and a couple of hours later a relaxed crowd is strolling the streets along the waterfront or shopping on Istiklal Street's endless pedestrian mall.

What follows is a short photo-stroll around the city, an attempt to capture some of its energy, contrasts, quirkiness and timeless beauty.