Istanbulis there anywhere more beautiful city?more magical ,tempting and seductive?The city that stays profoundly in heart,soul and mind ,the city that makes all , who have ever been there ,long for it...

Istanbul 2010-European Capital of Culture

lalabla, blalala, blur blur ba!

 Femme,you are losing your gutsOnce you were known for good responses,now have you become an opera singer?

Along with Essen (Germany) and... a little town called Pecs in Hungary :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVR6d1W43E

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2007-07-18-pecs-hungary_N.htm

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Anyway... have you ever been to anywhere in Istanbul outside of the touristic places? I think not..

Ummm....you are very right in that beauty is a subjective phenomenon...however for me Istanbul is the most amazing currently still alive city in the world. I think it has something to do with all the layers of civilization and cross cultural integration.

Istanbul undeniably has its own character and charm, but I wouldn´t say that it´s the most amazing city in the world, I find that to be a pretty strange thing to say anyway, kind of "eurocentric". I agree that Istanbul has some phenomenal landmarks and history, but as a city you can really only visit and tiny fraction of it, because the rest is just slums, with streets so tiny you can only park on them.

this is only one of many poems dedicated to istanbul, it describes the unique beauty it has

By the way Yeats is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century  

Byzantium a poem
by William Butler Yeats

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor´s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers´ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades´ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miraclc than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor´s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin´s mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. 

yes this poem is amazing considering Yeats never visited Istanbul in his waking life, but from his reading and his exposure to Byzantine art he made Byzantium his emblem of the Holy City. His introduction to its art came through the mosaics he saw in Palermo and Ravenna. He was moved by this hieratic mosaic art, and his invocation of the ecclesiastical figures that are depicted there marries impressions of the shimmering, rippled surface made by thousands of tiny squares of color, with the spiritual import of what is depicted.

heheheh....yeah... i know.... but still... )