First 3 pictures are of St. Anthony of Padua Church, which is the largest Roman Catholic Church in Istanbul, Turkey.

The church is considered a minor basilica and is run by Italian priests. In case anyone is curious:

• Saturday Mass is in Italian and begins at 19:00

• Sunday Mass is 9:30 in Polish, 10:00 in English and 17:00 in Turkish

• Tuesday Mass is in Turkish and begins at 11:00

• Weekday Masses are in English at 8:00

Fun Fact: Pope John XXIII preached in this church for 10 years, when he was the Vatican's ambassador to Turkey before being elected as pope. He is known in Turkey as ”The Turkish Pope" because of his fluent Turkish and his public adoration for Turkey and the city of Istanbul.

The other pictures are from Pera Museum, which was super cool. My favorite exhibition was “Constructing A Dream” which focused on the Albanian government’s attempts to build a propaganda narrative for the people to achieve socialist realism. I love propaganda art and I thought the idea of “new person” had similar parallels with China’s style of people in their propaganda posters.

The last picture in the bottom right is an exhibit made of sand. Behind it was a video of the artist sweeping up a copy of the sand installation in her home. I don’t really understand why, maybe to symbolize that art is fleeting, but I can only imagine how long it took her to make it. For 25 Lira, if you’ve got a free afternoon in Istanbul, I recommend checking out Pera Museum.