ORHAN PAMUK’S ISTANBUL -- 18

NEW YORK TIMES WORDS/STEVE WRIGHT IMAGE

A century ago, “all the boats that came from the Sea of Marmara, from the Mediterranean, ended up here,” Mr. Pamuk told me. 

As he relates in “Istanbul,” 

Gustave Flaubert arrived here in October 1850 for a six-month stay, stricken with a case of syphilis picked up in Beirut.

He still managed to frequent the city’s brothels and wrote about the “cemetery whores” who serviced soldiers by night. 

Another celebrated visitor of that era, the French writer and politician Alphonse de Lamartine, “described boys on the bridge shouting to the tourists, ‘Sir, give me a penny,’ ” Mr. Pamuk went on.

“Tourists would throw the money into the sea, and they would jump from the bridge and dive in and the money would be theirs.”

-Joshua Hammer