Divanyolu
“Divan” names the Ottoman council of state that met in the Topkapi Palace, and “yolu” is Turkish for path, road or way; thus the Divanyolu, the central thoroughfare of old Istanbul, was named for the counselors of state who trod it. It was a natural course for imperial processions and a public space that served state officials and the sultan himself as, in the words of Maurice Cerasi, “a theater for an ephemeral manifestation” of personal and state power. The Divanyolu was also where high officials built their konaks, and it was the site too of many türbes and hazires, which displayed themselves prominently as “a metaphor of power.”* This photograph features the course of the Divanyolu as it proceeds toward the Atmeydani (Hippodrome), with the Column of Constantine in the foreground abutting the two-domed Çemberlitaş Hamami, credited to the architect Mimar Sinan, while the Ayasofya and Sultan
Ahmet Mosque loom in the background.
* Maurice Cerasi, “The Urban and Architectural Evolution of the Istanbul Divanyolu: Urban
Aesthetics and Ideology in Ottoman Town Building.” Muqarnas 22 (2005): 204.