A panorama of the fringes of this megalopolis on the Bosphorus, this book takes readers off the beaten path, beyond cliché.

Istanbul, that sprawling megalopolis, offers a distillation of contemporary urban issues and the contradictions of modern-day Turkey. Conquests, political and religious intrigues, earthquakes, and fires, have swept through the former capital of the Ottoman Empire in succession. The city today, with its 16 million inhabitants, is reshaped on a vast scale by the paroxysms of capitalism as well as the vast ambitions of Erdoğan's "2023 Vision." The growth of the urban agglomeration over the last few decades has been astonishing, covering over the palimpsest of past layers, especially Byzantine, and destroying part of its magnificent heritage along the way.