Procession Kiosk

The Sublime Porte, also known as the Ottoman Porte or High Porte (Ottoman Turkish: باب عالی, romanized: Bāb-ı Ālī or Babıali, from Arabic: باب, romanized: bāb, lit. 'gate' and عالي, alī, lit. 'high'), was a synecdoche for the central government of the Ottoman Empire.

The Hacı Beşir Ağa Mosque (Turkish: Hacı Beşir Ağa Camii), located in Istanbul's Fatih district, was built in 1745. The design of the mosque can be described as baroque.

The Caferağa Medrese or Cafer Ağa Madrasa (Turkish: Caferağa Medresesi) is a former medrese, located in Istanbul, Turkey, next to the Hagia Sophia. It was built in 1559 by Mimar Sinan on the orders of Cafer Ağa, during the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566). The medrese was transformed by the Turkish Cultural Service Foundation in 1989 into a tourist centre with 15 classrooms/exhibition rooms, a big salon and a garden where traditional Turkish handicrafts such as calligraphy, ceramics, jewelry and so forth are taught, made and sold. It is now recognised as an important centre of Turkish classical arts, run by the Foundation for the Service of Turkish Culture. There is an annual exhibition at the end of each year where students of various classes (ceramics, mosaics, etc.) are given a chance to show case their works which are preselected by their teachers for this particular exhibition. The medrese is located close to the Hagia Sophia - stairs lead down to it from the small street - and to Topkapi Palace. The structure is entered through the main gate which leads into the inner courtyard, around which the former learning rooms are located. There is a restaurant inside that offers a variety of Turkish dishes. The medrese is located within the historical centre of Istanbul's Sultanhamet district, and as such comes within the UNESCO World Heritage Site conservation area which covers the entire district.

The Zeynep Sultan Mosque (in Turkish Zeynep Sultan Camii) is a mosque built in 1769 by Ayazma Mosque's architect Mehmet Tahir Ağa for Ahmed III's daughter Zeynep Sultan. It evokes Byzantine churches because of its architectural style and materials that were used in its construction.

Istanbul Governor's Office (Turkish: İstanbul Vilayet Konağı) is the seat of the Governor of Istanbul Province. It is located at Cağaloğlu quarter of Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey. It was the headquarters of the Ottoman Government, called the Sublime Porte, until the establishment of the Republic.

The 2008 Istanbul bombings occurred on July 27, 2008 when two explosions hit a busy shopping street in the Güngören district of Istanbul, killing seventeen people, five of them children, and injuring 154. The attacks occurred at 9:45 p.m. local time, 18:45 UTC, on a pedestrian street closed to traffic. The bombings were the deadliest civilian attacks in Turkey since the 2003 Istanbul bombings, five years earlier.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2004 was the 49th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Istanbul, Turkey, following the country's victory at the 2003 contest with the song "Everyway That I Can" by Sertab Erener. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), the contest was held at the Abdi İpekçi Arena, and, for the first time, consisted of a semi-final on 12 May, and a final on 15 May 2004. The two live shows were presented by Turkish actors Korhan Abay and Meltem Cumbul. It was the first time that Turkey had hosted the contest, 29 years after the country made its debut, and was also the first time since the 1998 contest in Birmingham that it was not hosted in the host country's capital city. This was the only edition of the contest that was hosted in a city other than the host nation's capital in the 21st century, until Germany picked Düsseldorf as the host city for the 2011 edition. Thirty-six countries participated in the contest, beating the record of twenty-six in the previous edition. Albania, Andorra, Belarus and Serbia and Montenegro took part for the first time this year. The old relegation system was replaced with a semi-final format. This was done in order to accommodate the increasing number of countries who wished to participate. The new format allowed all countries to participate every year, rather than being forced to sit out per the relegation rules, which had been the standard since 1994. Because of this, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Monaco and Switzerland all returned to the contest, Monaco not having competed since 1979. The winner was Ukraine with the song "Wild Dances", performed by Ruslana who wrote it with her husband Oleksandr Ksenofontov. This was Ukraine's first victory in the contest, only one year after the country made its debut in 2003. Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus rounded out the top five. Due the expansion of the contest, this year was the first time in which a non-winning entry scored over 200 points. Prior to this contest, only the winning entries in 1994 and 1997 had passed this mark. In this contest, the top 3 songs all got over 200 points. An official CD was released and, for the first time, the entire contest was released on DVD which included the semi-final and the grand final.

Soğukçeşme Sokağı (literally: Street of the Cold Fountain) is a small street with historic houses in the Sultanahmet neighborhood of Istanbul, Turkey, sandwiched in-between the Hagia Sophia and Topkapı Palace. The car-free zone street is named after the fountain situated at its end towards Gülhane Park. The wooden, two or three-storey Ottoman houses consisting of four to ten rooms date to the 19th to 20th century, and have been restored with the initiative of Çelik Gülersoy in 1985-1986. Called "Ayasofya Konakları" (Hagia Sophia Mansions), nine of the houses are part of the hotel Hagia Sofia Mansions Istanbul, Curio Collection by Hilton. The houses are named after the flower shrubs next to them as "Yaseminli Ev" (Jasmine House), "Mor Salkımlı Ev" (Wisteria sinensis House), "Hanımeli Ev" (Honeysuckle House) etc. The buildings are decorated in the 19th-century style with furniture including such items as beds and consoles, silk curtains, velvet armchairs and gilded mirrors. Most notable guest of the hostel was Queen Sofía of Spain, who stayed in the spring of 2000 for four nights.The birthplace of Turkey's 6th president Fahri Korutürk (1903–1987) is also situated in this street. One of the houses hosts the library "İstanbul Kitaplığı" with over 10,000 books about Istanbul owned by the Çelik Gülersoy Foundation. On one end of the street towards Gülhane Park is a Byzantine cistern, which houses the "Sarnıç Restaurant" today.

The first Arab siege of Constantinople in 674–678 was a major conflict of the Arab–Byzantine wars, and the first culmination of the Umayyad Caliphate's expansionist strategy towards the Byzantine Empire, led by Caliph Mu'awiya I. Mu'awiya, who had emerged in 661 as the ruler of the Muslim Arab empire following a civil war, renewed aggressive warfare against Byzantium after a lapse of some years and hoped to deliver a lethal blow by capturing the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. As reported by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor, the Arab attack was methodical: in 672–673 Arab fleets secured bases along the coasts of Asia Minor, and then proceeded to install a loose blockade around Constantinople. They used the peninsula of Cyzicus near the city as a base to spend the winter, and returned every spring to launch attacks against the city's fortifications. Finally, the Byzantines, under Emperor Constantine IV, managed to destroy the Arab navy using a new invention, the liquid incendiary substance known as Greek fire. The Byzantines also defeated the Arab land army in Asia Minor, forcing them to lift the siege. The Byzantine victory was of major importance for the survival of the Byzantine state, as the Arab threat receded for a time. A peace treaty was signed soon after, and following the outbreak of another Muslim civil war, the Byzantines even experienced a period of ascendancy over the Caliphate. The siege left several traces in the legends of the nascent Muslim world, although it is conflated with accounts of another expedition against the city in 669, led by the future Caliph Yazid I. As a result, the veracity of Theophanes's account was questioned in 2010 by Oxford scholar James Howard-Johnston, and more recently by Marek Jankowiak. Their analyses have placed more emphasis on the Arabic and Syriac sources, but have drawn different conclusions about the dating and existence of the siege. On the other hand, echoes of a large-scale siege of Constantinople and a subsequent peace treaty reached China, where they were recorded in later histories of the Tang dynasty.

The siege of Constantinople in 626 by the Sassanid Persians and Avars, aided by large numbers of allied Slavs, ended in a strategic victory for the Byzantines. The failure of the siege saved the empire from collapse, and, combined with other victories achieved by Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) the previous year and in 627, enabled Byzantium to regain its territories and end the destructive Roman–Persian Wars by enforcing a treaty with borders status quo c. 590.

The siege of Constantinople of 1411 occurred during the Ottoman Interregnum, or Ottoman Civil War, (20 July 1402 – 5 July 1413), when chaos reigned in the Ottoman Empire following the defeat of Sultan Bayezid I by the Central Asian warlord Timur. Although Mehmed Çelebi was confirmed as sultan by Timur after the Battle of Ankara, his brothers İsa Çelebi, Musa Çelebi, Süleyman Çelebi, and later, Mustafa Çelebi, refused to recognize his authority, each claiming the throne for himself. A civil war was the result. The Interregnum lasted until the Battle of Camurlu on 5 July 1413, when Mehmed Çelebi emerged as victor in the strife, crowned himself sultan Mehmed I, and restored peace to the empire.

The siege of Constantinople in 1394–1402 was a long blockade of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. Already in 1391, the rapid Ottoman conquests in the Balkans had cut off the city from its hinterland. After constructing the fortress of Anadoluhisarı to control the Bosporus strait, from 1394 on, Bayezid tried to starve the city into submission by blockading it both by land and, less effectively, by sea. The Crusade of Nicopolis was launched to relieve the city, but it was decisively defeated by the Ottomans. In 1399, a French expeditionary force under Marshal de Boucicaut arrived, but was unable to achieve much. The situation became so dire that in December 1399 the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos, left the city to tour the courts of Western Europe in a desperate attempt to secure military aid. The emperor was welcomed with honours, but secured no definite pledges of support. Constantinople was saved when Bayezid had to confront the invasion of Timur in 1402. Bayezid's defeat in the Battle of Ankara in 1402, and the Ottoman civil war that followed, even allowed the Byzantines to regain some lost territories, in the Treaty of Gallipoli.