More exhibitions

Up the road from the Istanbul Modern was a wonderful old building, when I got there they had 2 exhibitions running - one was about rugs - Flemish/Danish/Scandinavian style. Oops, I have forgotten already and didn't write it down. Sorry. And the other was Piri Reis maps, from the 1500s - fantastic!

Haci Ahmed Muhiddin Piri (c. 1467 - 1553), more commonly known as Piri Reis for his legendary stature in the Ottoman Navy, was a famed admiral and cartographer.

He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book that contains detailed information on navigation, as well as very accurate charts (for its time) describing the important ports and cities of the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a cartographer when a small part of his first world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929 at the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. His world map is the oldest known Turkish atlas showing the New World, and one of the oldest maps of America still in existence anywhere (the oldest known map of America that is still in existence is the map drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500). Piri Reis’ map is centered on the Sahara at the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer.