Istanbul in the Rain, Underground and Under Domes

When it pours on the old city, go beneath it or under a dome.

I arrived in Istanbul to a storm, and the hotel receptionist shrugged and said "lodos," the warm southwesterly that flings rain sideways. Then she recommended I go underground. So the day began in the Basilica Cistern, a sixth-century reservoir held up by a forest of columns, dimly lit, water dripping, carp sliding between the pillars. Two of the columns stand on Medusa heads, one sideways and one upside down, as if someone made a joke fifteen hundred years ago and nobody has dared remove it.

Above ground, in the rain, Hagia Sophia, where the dome seems to float on a ring of light. I took off my wet shoes and walked on the carpet in my socks, which felt like the right way to meet a building that old.

Lunch was lentil soup and pide at Pideci Islak Şemsiye near Sultanahmet, windows fogged, oven roaring, the owner insisting I dry my coat beside it. Then the Grand Bazaar, which is a roof over four thousand shops and therefore the only sensible place to be in a storm. I bought a lamp I did not need and drank three free teas in the process.

At dusk the rain stopped and the gulls came back. I ate roasted chestnuts on the steps of the New Mosque in Eminönü and watched the ferries slide in, wet and shining.

Lived March 07, 2026.