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Asia   November 05, 1989|BEVERLY BEYER and ED RABEY | Beyer and
Rabey are Los Angeles travel writers .  ISTANBUL, Turkey — Once
described as a comely bride adorned enticingly for her husband,
this color-splashed city is more than that, being a fetching
combination of earth mother, saucy soubrette, harridan and grand
dame at the doorway of Asia Minor.  With one foot in Europe and
the other in Asia, Istanbul's setting at the confluence of the
Sea of Marmara, Golden Horn and Bosporus, is unrivaled by any
other city--Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco and Naples included.
Istanbul's checkered history and changing fate began as a
fishing village about 1000 BC. It became the Greek Byzantium a
few centuries later and, after accepting Rome's influence and
fighting wars between the empire's various factions, it fell to
Constantine the Great and Christianity in AD 330.  He proclaimed
it "New Rome," renamed it Constantinople and made it capital of
the Eastern R