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Read an article in the _New York Times about Orhan Pamuk’s new Museum of Innocence, a quirky showcase of Istanbul life, based on his 2008 novel of the same name. Pamuk says that he “conceived the novel and the museum together.”

The museum is in the Cukurcuma neighborhood, close to thr Pera Palace Hotel and the Nisantasi shopping district.

Read the article: Museum of Innocence

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Summer 2010 News

Last week, Indagare founder Melissa Biggs Bradley visited Istanbul with her children. She found a city bustling with new energy and recent openings. Here are the highlights of her trip:

Hotel Buzz

Pera Palace

Cultural Rebirth

Deniz Palaz-IKSV

Hagia Sophia

Restaurant Scoop

Bistro Funfatale

Meze

Mimolett

X Restaurant

Shopping Discoveries

Armaggan

Sensus Wine

Yastik

“In recent years, the still rough-around-the-edges neighborhood [of Galata] has been rapidly transforming, and it is now home to a cluster of stylish boutiques and small restaurants. It’s easy to see why…” writes Yigal Schleifer in the New York Times about Istanbul’s newest up-and-coming neighborhood. Read the article (www.nytimes.com), including which restaurants and boutiques not to miss.

Read an article published in the New York Times about Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, who is in the process of opening a new museum based on his novel My Name is Red.

Writes Negar Azimi for the Times: “And like Kemal [the main character in My Name is Red], Pamuk will also open a museum of objects, filled with 83 displays for each of the 83 chapters of the novel. ‘As I wrote this novel over the past 10 years,’ Pamuk told me, ‘I encountered everyday objects that would make their way into the story. At other times, the story would demand an object to keep it moving, so I would bring one in. When I am stuck, I cast about looking for ideas from objects around me. My perceptions, or you can say my tentacles, are wide open to everything in shop windows, in friends’ homes, in flea markets and antique shops and so on. This is how the Museum of Innocence came about.’ “

Read the article.

Read ISTANBUL JOURNAL A Businessman’s Enterprise: Cajoling Democracy Into Full Flower from the New York Times

“ISHAK ALATON, a prominent member of Turkey’s tiny Jewish community, has a secret to living more intensely: He built his house next to a cemetery.

“You remember every day that you’re going to end up there,” he said.

Mr. Alaton is 81 and one of Turkey’s leading businessmen. He started with heating systems in the 1950s and expanded into construction, gyms and resorts. He has built roads in Kazakhstan, airports in Uzbekistan and a hospital in Moscow.

But now he is applying his energies to improving Turkish society. Read more

Read our Recommended Reading on Turkey