For those who manage to stray from the beaten paths, Secret Istanbul is full of surprising features and curious sights that will amaze residents as well as visitors who thought they knew all there is to know about Istanbul.
A horse's tomb that has become a place of pilgrimage, a tree held up by a pillar in the garden of a Sufi convent that would herald the end of the world if it fell down, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's glass, a carpet that predicts the end of the Ottoman empire, fragments from the Black Stone of Mecca, the covering of a fountain from Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, a church under the protection of Muhammad, a synagogue that was a landmark for Ashkenazi Jews, a garment worn by the Prophet that was inadvertently ironed, a handful of hot ash that saved the Ottoman empire ...
