Revelation Road

With more biblical sites than anywhere outside of Israel, Turkey’s spiritual tourism leads travelers and pilgrims to ruins

By Peter Manseau
Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page W16

From 3,000 loudspeakers affixed to the city’s 3,000 minarets, the canned wailing of muezzins rings out the call to prayer five times a day. Istanbul has been a Muslim city for more than 500 years, and yet there still seems to be no coordination when it comes to scheduling this most basic of Islamic customs. With each chorus of “allahu akbar” beginning imprecisely at sunrise, it’s pretty much every mosque for itself. Some start 10 seconds early, some 10 seconds late; at least one seems to wait until the coast is clear so that its adhan will have the air all to itself.

I don’t hear a thing once inside the immaculate, Muzak-filled confines of the Point Hotel. The Point is one of a new generation of high-end Istanbul lodgings — most within a few blocks of trendy Taksim Square — that seem to cater to travelers who do not want to know they are in Turkey. To enter the lobby from the predawn din is to suddenly inhabit another universe, one equipped with a Japanese restaurant, a “wellness spa” and molded plastic furniture apparently borrowed from the lounge deck of the Starship Enterprise.

Revelation Road – washingtonpost.com.