OPENING STATEMENT

摘要

On the European side of Istanbul, in what is roughly the geographic centre of the vast metropolis, is the neighbourhood of Beyoglu. Like much of Istanbul, Beyoglu's histories are manifest in the medieval towers, Neoclassical embassies and Modernist synagogues that run from the banks of the Golden Horn waterway up to the hilltop spine of istiklal Avenue. Stretching virtually straight for two kilometres across the top of the hill, Istiklal is remarkable in a city of jumbled alleyways. With its 19th-century streetscape, it's a boulevard that wouldn't look out of place in Vienna or Paris. Indeed, the influence of French architects and engineers is hard to miss on the street once known as the Grande Rue de Pera. Between Gezi Park, designed by Henri Prost for Ataturk in 1943 at one end, and the Tuenel, a 19th-century funicular railway designed by Eugene-Henri Gavand at the other, the Istiklal Avenue is lined with skinny, four-storey buildings with single facades.