Hemingway in Istanbul
A brief guide to Ernest Hemingway’s Constantinople.
In 1922, Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris and worked as a freelance journalist for «The Toronto Daily Star». The newspaper ordered him to Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930) to cover the war between Greece and Turkey. He left Paris on September 25 and arrived in Constantinople in the morning on the 29th.
All places on Google Maps.
1. Sirkeci railway station
Sirkeci railway station is the eastern terminus of the world-famous Orient Express train, which operated between Paris and Istanbul between 1883 and 2009. It was at this station that Hemingway arrived on September 29, 1922.
On October 18, he departed from Turkey to Paris, not from Istanbul but from Karaağaç railway station in Edirne.
2. Grand Hotel de Londres
Upon arrival, Hemingway took a taxi to the Grand Hotel de Londres, which was recommended to him by a Frenchman he had encountered on the train. In his first dispatch from the place, he typed:
Constantinople is noisy, hot, hilly, dirty, and beautiful… packed with uniforms and rumors.
After a while, he caught malaria and moved to the Montreal Hotel (the spot was not preserved). In the end, he was too ill to join other correspondents to cover the events, so he left the city on October 14. Nevertheless, he wrote twenty articles about the Greco-Turkish War based on this trip.
3. Beyoğlu
During his stay in the city, Hemingway interviewed several people from the Turkish and Allied sides and explored the Beyoğlu district (at that time, it was called Pera):
Pera is the European quarter. It is higher on the hill than Galata, the business quarter, and is all strung along the one narrow, dirty, steep, cobbled, tramcar-filled street. All the public buildings of Pera are uniform in their resemblance to the square, packing-case shaped Carnegie library…
3.1. As you might guess, «…one narrow, dirty, steep, cobbled, tramcar-filled street» is Istiklal Avenue.
3.2. The brothels of the Galata and Karaköy neighborhoods could be included in the sphere of his interests.
4. Orient Bar (Pera Palace Hotel)
Ernest Hemingway seems to have been hanging out in the Orient Bar, which is located on the ground floor of the Pera Palace Hotel. Now, there are photos of the writer in the interior of the bar and the hotel.
List of the sources
- Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Carlos Baker (стр. 97–98)
- Hemingway in Turkey: Historical Contexts and Cultural Intertexts, Himmet Umunç
- Hemingway in Turkey: The Influence of His Turkish Experiences on His Writing, Neriman Kuyucu
- Wolfgang Stock’s blog:
