Description
Turkey for the tourist is a daunting, yet infinitely rewarding, proposition. The guide books cover everything most efficiently, but present a different problem: how to choose between the places? Francis Russell has been travelling in Turkey for more than twenty years, and with the eighty three recommendations here he provides a fascinating and comprehensive itinerary. More interested in extant buildings than excavations, and favouring unexcavated sites over those where ‘the hand of the archaeologist is officiously evident’, from the lost classical world of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine sites, and the Armenian and Georgian churches which are offshoots of the same growth, to the great monuments of the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations, from the much visited southern coast to the heartlands of Anatolia, Russell’s deep understanding of the history and culture of the region, and his keen eye for detail, make him the most delightfully erudite of travelling companions.
