Lonely Planet İstanbul Guide

During the past decade the city’s big banks, businesses and universities have built and endowed an array of cutting-edge museums and cultural centres, many of which have been designed by local architectural practices with growing international reputations. Joining mightily impressive cultural centres such as İstanbul Modern, SALT Galata, ARTER and Borusan Contemporary on the Bosphorus will be the Antrepo 5 Museum of Contemporary Art, a visually arresting building in Tophane designed by high-profile local architectural firm Emre Arolat. These and a number of other institutions (large and small, public and private) aim to nurture a new and exciting generation of Turkish artists. Complementing exhibition, lecture and performance programs, the city’s festival circuit, spearheaded by the impressive İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, is now one of the busiest in Europe. And Some Dodgy Developments The city’s skyline is in many ways its signature, but in the past decade some modern – and mind-blowingly ugly – developments have been added to it. In order to accommodate this ‘urban regeneration’, some residents – a good percentage of whom, critics have noted, are members of minority social groups – have been forcibly removed from their homes in inner-city suburbs and relocated to purpose-built high-rise housing in outer suburbs.