The Trans-Siberian Railway is the world’s longest single continuous rail line, spanning about 9,289 kilometers from Moscow to Vladivostok across eight time zones, vast taiga forests, steppe, mountains, and 16 major rivers.
Construction began in 1891 under Tsar Alexander III, with Tsarevich Nicholas II laying the first stone in Vladivostok. The project aimed to unite the Russian Empire, boost trade with Asia, and develop Siberia’s resources.
Built in sections from both ends amid harsh terrain and permafrost, the full Russian route (avoiding earlier Manchurian shortcuts) was completed in 1916. It later supported Soviet industrialization, World War II logistics, and remains a key passenger and freight corridor operated by Russian Railways.
The premier service is the Rossiya train number 001/002, a comfortable firmeny train with renovated carriages featuring air conditioning, power outlets, USB ports, and showers in some cars. It offers first-class (two-berth), second-class kupe (four-berth), and ...
The Kariye Mosque, also known as the Chora Church or Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, stands in the Edirnekapı neighborhood of Istanbul’s Fatih district as one of the city’s most remarkable surviving monuments of Late Byzantine art and architecture. Its name derives from the Greek word chora, meaning “countryside” or “in the fields,” a reference to its original location outside the early walls of Constantinople built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century; the Turkish form Kariye preserves that same sense of a rural or outer place.
When Emperor Theodosius II constructed the formidable Theodosian land walls between 413 and 414, the church was enclosed within the new defensive circuit yet kept its evocative name.
Today it sits immediately beside those walls in the Edirnekapı area, roughly one hundred meters from the historic fortifications and near the Edirnekapı gate, so that visitors can walk from the mosque to the surviving stretches of the Theodosian Walls in only a few ...
Arasta Bazaar, known locally as Arasta Çarşısı, sits tucked away just behind the Blue Mosque in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district on the European side of the city. It forms a single, relatively narrow pedestrian street lined with roughly seventy to eighty shops, creating an intimate and far quieter alternative to the vast labyrinth of the Grand Bazaar.
The market is free to enter and typically open daily from around 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., though individual shop hours can vary.
Visitors reach it easily by taking the T1 tram to Sultanahmet station and walking a few minutes past the Blue Mosque, or simply by strolling from nearby landmarks such as Hagia Sophia or Topkapı Palace.
The shops specialize in traditional Turkish handicrafts of generally higher quality than the more tourist-oriented stalls found elsewhere: handmade carpets and kilims, Iznik-style ceramics, textiles including pestemal bath towels, jewelry, glassware, lamps, soaps, spices, and other artisanal souvenirs.
The atmosphere ...
The ancient Greek colony of Byzantium stood at the crossroads of Europe and Asia until 330 AD, when Emperor Constantine the Great refounded it as Constantinople, the new capital of the Roman Empire and a deliberately Christian “Nova Roma.”
For more than a thousand years the city served as the heart of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, its emperors raising churches, forums, cisterns and palaces while defending Roman law and culture. That long continuity ended on 29 May 1453, when Ottoman forces under Mehmed II captured the city and brought the Byzantine Empire to a close.
Near the sea walls stands Little Hagia Sophia, originally the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus. Built under Justinian and Theodora in the early sixth century, its octagonal core and ribbed dome already experiment with the spatial ideas later perfected in the great Hagia Sophia.
A short distance inland the Hippodrome once staged the chariot races and public spectacles that defined civic life. Three monuments still...
