Istambul, Constantinopla

The Surp Krikor Lusavoriç church stands on the coastal road in the Istanbul neighborhood of Kuzguncuk. Below it lies the waters of the Bosphorus, to the northeast stands the intercontinental suspension bridge, raised in the 1970s, that connects Europe with Asia; next door stands a mosque. Local residents point to the way these two places of worship—one Armenian Christian, the other Muslim—exist adjacent to each other as historical examples of cosmopolitanism and coexistence. But as Amy Mills shows in this study of Turkey’s largest city, rose-tinted memories of a contented multicultural past are not always to be trusted...