No detail is skimped in the Barış Manço House Museum, dedicated to the pioneer of Turkish rock who is sometimes described as the country’s answer to Elvis Presley (writes Tim Cornwell). Highlights include the rockstar’s Steinway grand piano, and exuberant collection of 19th-century furnishings, Manço’s fanciful concert outfits and of course the stairs designed as piano keys.
Manço was born in Üsküdar in 1943 and began performing the early 1960s. Famous as the man who made long hair fashionable in Turkey, he has remained one of the country’s icons of popular music since his untimely death from a heart attack in 1999. The Victorian mansion, across the road from the Anglican church, was the last of the Whittall family homes in Moda and dates back to the 1890s. Read Tim Cornwell’s full review in Cornucopia 52.
Contributions by Andrew Finkel, Harriet Rix, Tim Cornwell et al. Photographs by Monica Fritz, Brian McKee, Fritz von der Schulenburg