Everywhere satellite dishes sprout from unlikely corners. Some of the old taller buildings are no longer habitable but their ground floors are home to open-front stores. Fruit sellers water their produce to keep it fresh for never ending groups of shoppers. The Orchestra and Chorus of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia will be on stage as well as Ricardo Muti and the La Scala Orchestra and Chorus and John Elliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists. Many of the concerts have the added attraction of being performed in centuries old churches with enviable acoustics.
Audiences have a chance to meet the artists and according to one source 'they go crazy for it' .
Concerts are often sold out for months in advance to people hoping to hear international concert artists in these historic surroundings. Night and day Istanbul is the site of countless facets. Tooting insistence of human, animal and motorized traffic are a small part of the intrigue with donkey-drawn carts competing with old DeSotos and glistening Mercedes Benz convertibles for dominance of the narrow, antiquated streets and broad boulevards, overlapping effortlessly the old and the new, the foreign and the native, the rich and the poor. In all her grandeur and operatic despair, this former hub of the fabled Orient Express is still a potent lure for the traveler. Apart from stamina, resilience, talent and true grit all you need to write a good travel guide is the right stuff.