are also churches and houses dating from Genoese
days. Galata is the chief business centre of the city, the seat of
banks, post-offices, steamship offices, &c. Pera is the principal
residential quarter of the European communities settled in
Constantinople, where the foreign embassies congregate, and the
fashionable shops and hotels are found.

Since the middle of the 19th century the city has yielded more and more
to western influences, and is fast losing its oriental character. The
sultan's palaces, and the residences of all classes of the community,
adopt with more or less success a European style of building. The
streets have been widened and named. They are in many instances better
paved, and are lighted at night. The houses are numbered. Cabs and
tramways have been introduced. Public gardens have been opened. For some
distance outside the Galata bridge, both shores of the Golden Horn have
been provided with a quay at which large steamers can moor to discharge
or embark their passengers and cargo. The Galata quay, completed in
1889, is 756 metres long and 20 metres wide; the Stamboul quay,
completed in 1900, is 378 metres in length. The harbour, quays and
facilities for handling merchandise, which have been established at the
head of the Anatolian railway, at Haidar Pasha, under German auspices,
would be a credit to any city. It is true that most of these
improvements are due to foreign enterprise and serve largely foreign
interests; still they have also benefited the city, and added much to
the convenience and comfort of local life. There has been likewise
progress in other than material respects. The growth of the imperial
museum of antiquities, under the direction of Hamdy Bey, within the
grounds of the Seraglio, has been remarkable; and while the collection
of the sarcophagi discovered at Sidon constitutes the chief treasure of
the museum, the institution has become a rich storehouse of many other
valuable relics of the past. The existence of a school of art, where
painting and architecture are taught, is also a sign of new times. A
school of handicrafts flourishes on the Sphendone of the Hippodrome. The
fine medical school between Scutari and Haidar Pasha, the Hamidieh
hospital for children, and the asylum for the poor, tell of the advance
of science and humanity in the place.

Considerable attention is now given to the subject of education
throughout the empire, a result due in great measure to the influence