Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul (, or or ; ), historically known as Byzantium and before 1924 as Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait (which separates Europe and Asia) between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side. The city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (coterminous with Istanbul Province), both hosting a population of around 15
Strait is the Gate gate of virtue is too narrow for two people, too narrow for love, and too narrow for two people in love. Alissa so deliriously desires that even though she loves Jerome, this love between them has become, in her mind, his impediment to virtue. She rejects him, time and time again, and yet this is the way in which she expresses love, because this is the only way he would enter the strait gate. What Alissa longs for, is not the strait gate itself, but the process of getting through the gate - it is the striving in “strive to