QUOTE : How often, returning to my hotel from a long idle stroll, have I imagined fearfully that in some unknown quarter, a fine membrane or a crystal dome will suddenly crack, and that a Time accumulated beneath, a Time which belongs to my memories and their surrounding landscape, a Time with a thousand and one characteristics that are not of today, will carry everything away like great waters bursting their dykes. I believe that anyone familiar with Bursa will share this illusion of mine; history has made its mark so deeply and powerfully on this city. It is present everywhere with its own rhythm, its own particular delight, and springs up before us at every step. Sometimes a tomb, a mosque, a traveller’s inn, a tombstone, here an ancient plane tree, there a fountain, with a name or a view reminiscent of the past, and a light of past days shimmering above them permeates all with yearning and catches you by the throat.