View from the Galata Bridge looking up the Golden Horn with the Suleimaniye Mosque, Constantinople

In his diary entry of 1884, Von Dardel describes his impressions of the Galata bridge which he had seen during a visit to Constantinople: "We stayed there for half an hour to look at the mingling crowd, in which not two persons wore clothes, or hardly even heads, of the same colours: there were Moors, Turks, Arabs, Negroes, Persians and Europeans of all colours. Among others, we saw a Turkish general with his guard on small white horses..some Englishmen, two Turkish ladies..a Persian in a chimney shaped fur hat, dressed in grey and light blue, an Armenian clergyman in a long black coat, a Greek in a white skirt and a donkey charged with big wine vats." (Dagboksanteckningar, Stockholm, 1920, p. 228).

Included in his diary is a watercolour on which this picture is based.