Ride the public commuter ferry from Eminönü to Üsküdar and you cross from Europe to Asia on an ordinary city boat; stay three or four days and you have time for a full day up the Bosphorus and another on the Princes' Islands.
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Three days cover the essentials: one in the old city around Sultanahmet, one in Beyoğlu with an evening in Kadıköy, and one on the Bosphorus. A fourth day fits the Princes' Islands, about 90 minutes by ferry from the European piers to Büyükada and 45 minutes from the Asian side.
On the Istanbulkart, the city's transport card, which pays for the metro, trams, buses, suburban trains and local ferries. Tram line 1 runs through Sultanahmet and over the Galata Bridge to Karaköy, where the Tünel funicular climbs to İstiklal Avenue. The metro runs generally from about 06:15 to about 00:15.
Late May to early June and late September to early October are the most pleasant weeks. July and August average about 26°C by day, and winter is the wet season, when much of the year's rain falls. Ramadan 2027 begins around 8 February, with the exact date announced shortly before; the holiday that ends it is expected from 9 March, and some sights close on its first day.
Turkish. Tram stops, metro stations and ferry piers carry their Turkish names, so the local spelling (Eminönü, Karaköy, Kadıköy, Üsküdar) is the one to look for on signs and maps.
The Turkish lira. Euros and US dollars are accepted in places that see many visitors, but some sights take only lira. Exchange offices and banks are plentiful across the centre.
Istanbul Airport IST and Sabiha Gökçen SAW, which lies on the Asian side about 40 km from Kadıköy. From IST, the M11 metro runs to Gayrettepe, where it meets the M2 line into the centre, and on via Kağıthane to Halkalı; Havaist coaches serve the city centre on several routes. From SAW, the M4 metro reaches Kadıköy in about an hour, and Havabüs coaches take 60 to 90 minutes to Taksim.
Start each old-city day early, because the Hagia Sophia queue is long by late morning. Keep one whole day for the Bosphorus. The public ferry leaves Eminönü at 10:35 and waits some hours at Anadolu Kavağı before it turns back; tickets are sold only at the booth, from about an hour before, and the boat does not wait for latecomers.
Pick your base by what you want at night: Sultanahmet puts the old-city sights on your doorstep and has the flattest streets. Karaköy and Galata, across the Golden Horn, are livelier after dark and close to the tram. Kadıköy, across the Bosphorus on the Asian side, is a leafy, walkable base with its own evenings out.
Tuesday shuts Topkapı Palace, Monday shuts Dolmabahçe Palace, and the Grand Bazaar is normally closed on Sundays and public holidays, so set your days around them. At Hagia Sophia, foreign visitors buy a ticket and use a separate entrance, with a route through the upper galleries; the ground floor is for worship, and the building stays open while restoration scaffolding stands inside the dome.
The great mosques are working mosques that close to visitors at prayer times; the Blue Mosque stays shut to visitors on Fridays until the afternoon. Cover shoulders and knees, cover your hair if you are a woman, and leave your shoes in the racks at the entrance. In a taxi, make sure the meter is running, and if the driver refuses, get out and take another.
Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapı Palace and the Basilica Cistern all lie within walking distance of one another in this old-city quarter, set around the long square that was once the Byzantine Hippodrome. Tram line 1 runs through it, and its streets are flatter than most in the city. Evenings are quiet here, so a night out usually means the tram or a taxi across the water.
Across the Golden Horn from the old city, this hill district climbs from the water up to İstiklal Avenue and Taksim Square, with Galata Tower on the slope between. It is the side of the city for evenings out, and its streets are steep. The sights of the historic peninsula are a short tram ride away, too far to walk to every day.
Tram line T1 crosses the Galata Bridge from here to the old city in about ten minutes, which makes this waterside quarter below Galata one of the most central bases. Fish restaurants gather around the local fish market, and ferries leave from its pier. In the evening it is calmer than İstiklal, with the tram and the ferries both close at hand.
A twenty-minute ferry from Eminönü or Karaköy reaches this district on the Asian side, a short crossing for an evening out. The produce market off Güneşlibahçe Sokak and the bar streets behind it fill the centre, with bookshops and cinemas around them. On Sundays the area becomes a second-hand book and music market.
From the street, a stone stair takes you down into a sixth-century Byzantine reservoir, where you walk a raised walkway between rows of reused stone columns standing in shallow water, out to two Medusa heads carved into column bases.
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Free to enter and still used for daily prayer, the Blue Mosque lets you walk into a working prayer hall lined in blue Iznik tile, if you time it between one call to prayer and the next.
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Across the water from Istanbul's piers, Büyükada gives you streets with no cars on them, lined with old wooden mansions, and a cobbled pilgrim path up to a monastery church on the island's highest hill.
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Look up in the Ceremonial Hall and a Bohemian crystal chandelier of 750 lights hangs over you. Sultans held state ceremonies in this room and received the empire's notables here on religious holidays.
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Walk the balcony at the top all the way round and you take in all 360 degrees of Istanbul, with the Golden Horn curling inland below the tower.
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One roof covers 61 streets of jewellers, lamp sellers and carpet dealers, and in a single morning you can walk from the old hall of gems at its heart out to courtyard inns where gold and silver are still worked by hand.
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Where else can you stand a few steps from Byzantine gold mosaics and look across at Ottoman calligraphy in the same room? Hagia Sophia's upper gallery shows you its church and its mosque in one walk.
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Quieter than the Blue Mosque and rarely crowded, Sinan's mosque for Süleyman puts you under one great dome with almost no visible support, in a prayer hall lit by about 200 stained-glass windows.
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Of the palace's hundreds of rooms, only the most important are open, and those are where the sultans lived, kept their jewels and guarded the Prophet Muhammad's relics.
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Where the long public Bosphorus ferry from Eminönü turns round, this fishing village on the Asian shore sits close to the Black Sea. The stop leaves time for lunch at the restaurants on the landing and the climb to Yoros Castle above. An hourly bus also runs from the village back to Üsküdar, for a return by road.
Wooden Ottoman houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries line the waterfront here, many with Art Nouveau decoration, between seafood restaurants. Regular buses run along the busy coast road that passes through the village. The historic campus of Robert College is also here, above the houses on the shore.
In Hasköy on the Golden Horn, an Ottoman pavilion built in the early 1600s and given its present form under Selim III is now a museum run by the National Palaces. It is closed on Mondays, and the ticket office opens at nine and shuts at five. The Rahmi M. Koç Museum is in the same neighbourhood.
Steep lanes of small stone terraced houses, many repainted in bright colours, climb from the Golden Horn shore in this quarter, once the centre of the city's Jewish community. Its synagogues and the Bulgarian iron church are the places to look for between the painted fronts. The T5 tram and the Golden Horn ferries both stop here.
At the bend of a small bay on the European shore of the Bosphorus, this village has cafés along the water and a small mosque designed in 1912. The usual way in is on foot, along the shore walk that starts at Ortaköy and passes through Arnavutköy. Make a morning of the full walk, with a coffee stop in each village along the strait.
Serbs brought from Belgrade in the 16th century settled the village that gave this large mixed forest its name. The woodland is split between the Sarıyer and Eyüp districts on the northern edge of the city, and several historic reservoirs lie inside it. It also holds an arboretum, for a day of walking away from the city streets.
A summer palace on the Asian shore, completed in 1865 for Sultan Abdülaziz and used to house visiting royalty, including the Empress Eugénie on her way to the opening of the Suez Canal. Its Neo-Baroque exterior wraps traditional Ottoman interior decoration. It is smaller and far less crowded than Dolmabahçe, and entry is by guided tour.
Every mid-morning a public ferry leaves Eminönü for the far end of the strait, and from its last stop, a village on the Asian shore, you can climb to a ruined castle that looks north over the Black Sea.
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Prefabricated cast-iron panels in a Neo-Byzantine style make up this Bulgarian Orthodox church on the Golden Horn shore at Balat. It is a landmark on the coast walk between Balat and Fener, and the building was renovated from 2011. Walk the shore path from Balat towards Fener to see its whole front from the waterside.
Third largest of the Princes' Islands, this small island rises to a single hill, Bayraktepe, 170 m high and also called Christ Hill. On it stands the Monastery of Hagios Georgios Garipi, largely built in 1897 and restored after the 1999 earthquake. The hill and the monastery are the island's two landmarks.
Rising behind Üsküdar on the Asian side, one of the highest points in the city looks across the southern Bosphorus to the mouth of the Golden Horn and the European shore. A municipal park covers the top, with teahouses, cafés, flower gardens and fountains, and the large Çamlıca Mosque opened nearby in 2019. The hour before sunset is the time to climb it.
An eleventh-century church in Edirnekapı whose fourteenth-century mosaics and frescoes are among the finest late Byzantine painting to survive. It reopened for Muslim worship in May 2024, so the images in the nave are curtained at prayer times and the side chapels hold much of the work.
Two small parks and narrow streets of cafés, especially around Akarsu Yokuşu, make up this quarter on the slope between Taksim Square and Kabataş. Cihangir Mosque, rebuilt in 1889, looks across the Bosphorus to Sarayburnu at the tip of the old city. Taksim Square sits at the top of the slope and the Kabataş waterfront at the bottom.
Every April, this park up the European shore at Sarıyer becomes the main stage of the city's tulip festival, and it is one of the largest parks in Istanbul. Its upper paths look over the Bosphorus, and an old pavilion now serves as a café. Spring weekends bring the biggest crowds, so weekdays are calmer.
Midway up the Golden Horn, this old-city quarter shares its steep lanes with neighbouring Balat, and its Virgin Mary Church is one of the few in the city never turned into a mosque. The T5 tram stops here, and so does the Golden Horn ferry from Karaköy and Üsküdar. Expect a climb: the streets rise very steeply from the shore, and weekends are the busiest days.
Trams on line T1 cross this bridge between Eminönü and Karaköy, and its footpaths link an old-city day with a Galata evening. The walkways are the place to watch the sun go down behind the domes of the old city. The present span, finished in 1994, is the fifth bridge on this crossing of the Golden Horn.
Once the outer garden of Topkapı Palace, this public park drops from the palace wall all the way down to the Sarayburnu shore, at the tip of the old city. In April its beds are planted with tulips. The terrace cafe looks out over the mouth of the Bosphorus.
Justinian had this church rebuilt in 548, and it is the oldest known church in the city, one of the few Byzantine churches here never converted to a mosque. It stands in the outer courtyard of Topkapı Palace, on the way into the palace, so it fits into the same visit as the palace.
Second in size among the Princes' Islands, this one is quieter than Büyükada. The municipal ferries from Kabataş call here on their hourly run via Kadıköy, so a stop on the way back from the larger island is easy. Summer brings small open-air concerts and a seaside swimming club, and İsmet İnönü's old house sometimes opens as a museum.
Running about 1.4 km from Taksim Square down to Tünel, this pedestrian street is the spine of Beyoğlu, lined with shops and restored old buildings. A nostalgic tram runs its full length. Daytime crowds are heavy, so early morning or evening is the time for a walk, and at the Tünel end the old funicular drops down to Karaköy.
Sinan was in his 90s when he built this mosque, the heart of a complex with a medrese, a hamam, a tomb and a fountain. It once stood right beside the Bosphorus, but the water in front was filled in, and buildings now surround it. Its 16th-century ship lamp, which hung from the central dome, is now in the Istanbul Naval Museum.
Finished in 1857 and open as a museum since 1944, this small summer pavilion stands on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus near Anadoluhisarı, in the Küçüksu neighbourhood of Beykoz. Cast-iron railings ring its garden, with a gate on each side, so the house and its garden can be seen from outside.
Streets of old Ottoman wooden houses, many painted in bright colours, run up from the Bosphorus in this small village on the Asian shore. Churches, synagogues and a mosque stand within a few streets of each other, and the mosque was built in the courtyard of the Armenian church. Plane trees, vegetable gardens and cobbled lanes make it a favourite film set, a short bus or taxi ride north of Üsküdar.
Free to enter, this former Byzantine church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus is now a working mosque, a short walk from the Blue Mosque and far quieter than its famous neighbours. A long restoration ended in 2006, and the building reopened both to visitors and for worship. It fits easily into a Sultanahmet day, a few minutes from the larger sights.
Once part of the Dolmabahçe Palace gardens, this city park has paths for walking and jogging, play areas for children, benches and ornamental pools. It was separated from the palace grounds in the mid-19th century and has been a public park since. The paths make an easy green walk, with no tickets and nothing to queue for.
A small tower on its own islet off Üsküdar, rebuilt many times since a Byzantine customs post stood here, it reopened after restoration in 2023. Boats run out to it from Üsküdar and from Kabataş. Sit facing west for the old city skyline across the water.
Built for Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, this Sinan mosque sits on the summit of the sixth hill, close to the top of the old city. Work started in 1563 and was finished by 1570. Because it stands so high, its dome and minaret are a landmark from across the city.
135 models of buildings, at a scale of 1:25, stand in this open-air park on the north-eastern shore of the Golden Horn. They come from Istanbul, Anatolia and former Ottoman lands, and include reconstructions of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Rahmi M. Koç Museum is on the same shore of the Golden Horn.
This small headland lies a walk south of the Kadıköy ferry terminals, through the market streets of Kadıköy Çarşı and then along Moda Street, and a nostalgic tram also runs out to it. Parks line its shore, and cafés fill old Ottoman houses along the way. Kadife Street, also called Bar Street, is busiest after dark.
Safiye Sultan ordered this large Ottoman mosque in 1597 at the southern end of the Galata Bridge in Eminönü, and it took more than half a century to finish, under another royal mother, Turhan Sultan. It marks the crossing from the old city to Beyoğlu. A walk over the bridge from Karaköy brings it straight into view.
Begun in 1748 and finished in 1755, this mosque beside the Grand Bazaar was the first monumental Ottoman building in the Baroque style. Its courtyard is shaped like a horseshoe, unlike any earlier Ottoman mosque, and its dome is one of the largest in the city. The streets of the Grand Bazaar surround it on every side.
Close to the European pylon of the Bosphorus Bridge, this village on the European shore has one of the most photographed waterfronts on the strait, with the bridge rising beside it. Regular buses run along the coast road through the village and north towards Arnavutköy. The waterfront is the place to see the bridge at close range from the shore.
A baroque mosque of about 1856 by the Balyan family, the architects of Dolmabahçe, standing at the water's edge with the first Bosphorus bridge behind it, which is why it appears on so much of the city's advertising. The pier square around it is busiest at weekends, so a weekday morning is calmer.
Walk up through the Eyüp cemetery, about 15 minutes on foot, and ride the cable car down: the terrace at the top looks out over the Golden Horn towards the old city. The view from the hilltop is free to anyone who makes the climb. The cable car runs between the terrace and the Eyüp waterfront.
Closed on Mondays, this private museum of transport, industry and communications fills two joined historic buildings at Hasköy, on the north shore of the Golden Horn. The Golden Horn ferry stops at Hasköy. Aynalıkavak Pavilion stands in the same neighbourhood, and Miniatürk lies further along the shore.
A small mosque by Mimar Sinan above the Golden Horn warehouses, completed around 1563 and reached by a staircase that hides its door from the street. Iznik tile covers almost every wall inside and under the entrance porch, in many different designs, and a long restoration finished in 2021 returned the colour. It sits a few steps from the Spice Bazaar.
Two minarets, each with two balconies, rise over this 16th-century imperial mosque on the city's third hill, in Fatih; it is the only mosque Sinan designed for anyone other than a sultan with that arrangement. A marble-paved, colonnaded forecourt as large as the prayer hall leads in. The mosque and its complex went up between 1545 and 1548.
Look for the Iznik tiles inside this small Sinan mosque at Kadırga, in the Fatih district: the mosque is known above all for their fine quality. It was finished in 1572 on a steep slope, so it is entered through a two-storey courtyard that Sinan built to deal with the drop.
Beside the New Mosque at Eminönü, this covered market of spice and Turkish delight sellers fills an hour, and you finish a short walk away inside Rüstem Paşa Mosque, its walls almost entirely covered in blue and white İznik tiles.
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The central station of the metro network lies under this big open square, the heart of modern Istanbul, where İstiklal Avenue begins. The Republic Monument, unveiled in 1928, stands on the square. From here the nostalgic tram sets off down the avenue to Tünel, so a walk down İstiklal can start with a ride.
Start at Yedikule in the south or Edirnekapı in the north to walk the old city's double land walls, built in the 5th century. Expect uneven ground all the way. Restoration has been under way for decades, so some sections are fenced off and the path has gaps where the work closes them.
Ferries from Eminönü and Beşiktaş land at the docks that form the centre of this Asian-shore district, one of the simplest crossings from Europe to Asia. Small mosques and dervish lodges stand in the streets around the pier, and the waterfront is quieter than the European side. Kuzguncuk is a short bus or taxi ride north, and Çamlıca Hill rises behind the town.
From a wide terrace on top of the fifth hill, this 16th-century imperial mosque looks out over the Golden Horn and down on the Cistern of Aspar, an old Roman reservoir. The tomb of Sultan Selim, completed in 1523, stands in the garden behind. Reaching it means a steep climb up the streets from Balat.
Ruined walls of a castle from Byzantine times stand on the hill above Anadolu Kavağı, looking over the point where the Bosphorus meets the Black Sea. The climb from the ferry landing takes about 20 minutes, and the walk back down about 15. Excavations closed the site for several years; it has reopened, but the military land around it stays closed to visitors.
A complex of three museums containing artifacts spanning from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period, including the Alexander Sarcophagus and Nebuchadnezzar's Gate. Located at the edge of Topkapi Palace grounds.
Located in Beyoğlu, this museum houses Anatolian weights and measures, Ottoman art, and contemporary Turkish and international works. The building is housed in a restored early 20th-century apartment building.
Give the address, Irmak Caddesi No. 13 in Dolapdere, to a taxi driver or a map app: this gallery for art exhibitions stands apart from the main sightseeing streets of Beyoğlu, on the European side. The programme changes through the year, so check what is showing before the trip.
The mosque at the head of the Golden Horn beside the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, a companion of the Prophet, and a major pilgrimage site for the city. The present building dates from 1800, on a site first built on in 1458, and Ottoman sultans came here to be girded with the Sword of Osman at the start of their reigns. It is busiest on Fridays and through Ramadan.
Whirling ceremonies were traditionally held on Sundays in the 150-seat hall of this lodge on the Galata side of the Golden Horn, the oldest Mevlevi lodge in the city. It is now a museum of Ottoman literature and Mevlevi culture. Ask at the lodge which days have a ceremony during the stay.
Mosaics dug up at the site of the Byzantine Great Palace fill this small museum at the Arasta Bazaar, a few minutes on foot from Sultanahmet Square. It closed for restoration in July 2023 with no reopening date announced. Until it reopens, the upper gallery of Hagia Sophia is the nearest place to see Byzantine mosaics.
The chariot-racing arena of the Byzantine capital, now a long public square holding an Egyptian obelisk, a bronze serpent column looted from Delphi and a German fountain of 1900. Nothing of the track survives above ground, and the monuments stand on its old central spine.
Turkey's first museum of modern and contemporary art, rehoused in May 2023 in a Renzo Piano building on the Galataport waterfront at Karaköy. The collection concentrates on art in Turkey from 1950 onwards, across painting, photography and video, and the building also holds a cinema and a library. The roof terrace looks straight across at the historic peninsula.
About 20,000 pieces fill the biggest maritime museum in Turkey, among them the Tarihi Kadırga, an Ottoman galley. It stands near the Beşiktaş ferry pier for the Kadıköy line, and it opens every day except Mondays, New Year's Day and the first day of religious holidays.
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel laureate, built this museum in Çukurcuma, in Beyoğlu, on his 2008 novel of the same name. The ticket printed in the book's 83rd chapter is stamped at the entrance. Reading the novel before the visit is the way to follow the museum, which tells the same story.
Replicas of scientific instruments used by Muslim scholars from the 9th to the 16th centuries fill this museum in the former Imperial Stables in Gülhane Park. The models were made in Frankfurt from descriptions and drawings in texts of the period, and the museum opened in 2008. Its park setting puts it within an easy walk of the other old-city sights.
Teşvikiye is the centre of this quarter north of Taksim, and the nearest metro stop is Osmanbey on the M2 line. Buses and dolmuş minibuses run along Halaskargazi Avenue to Taksim and Mecidiyeköy, and the Beşiktaş ferries are within walking distance. It lies away from the old city's sights, so time there means a metro or bus ride back to them.
Since 2021, a late 13th-century Byzantine palace in the north-western part of the old city has been open as a museum, fully restored and with a new roof. Inside are pottery and tiles of the kinds made in the abandoned palace buildings in the 18th century. Its Turkish name, Tekfur Sarayı, is the one to give a taxi driver.
In Fener, this Byzantine church holds one of the largest sets of Byzantine mosaics in the city. The main building has served as the Fethiye Mosque since 1591, while its side chapel is kept as a museum, and a ticket may be needed for the chapel. Restoration work on the building started again in 2021.
This museum's panorama shows the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the building stands close to the point where the Ottoman troops broke through the walls. Its stop is Topkapı on the T1 and T4 tram lines. That stop is a different place from Topkapı Palace, on the far side of the old city.
The fortress Mehmed II built on the European bank in 1452 to close the Bosphorus before the siege, facing the older Anadoluhisarı across the water. Its towers are climbable and the walls run steeply down to the shore. It is now a museum, and the grounds host open-air concerts and festivals in season.
The Sabancı family's former mansion at Emirgan opened as a museum in 2002. It holds Ottoman calligraphy, documents and painting, and a newer gallery brings large touring exhibitions to the city, from Picasso to Rodin. The garden runs down towards the Bosphorus, and the museum hosts cultural events at weekends.
Behind the front of the old Imperial Ottoman Bank headquarters on Bankalar Street in Karaköy, a cultural and arts centre opened in 2011. It holds exhibitions and the Ottoman Bank Museum, and its ground floor has a library, a bookshop, an inner garden and a café. It is a short walk from the Karaköy tram stop.
The former palace of Ibrahim Pasha, built in 1524 on the west side of the Hippodrome, holding a notable carpet collection alongside Qur'ans, calligraphy, woodwork and Seljuk stone. Its ethnographic rooms recreate the dwellings of nomad groups from different regions of Turkey. The museum faces the Blue Mosque across the square and is usually far calmer than the monuments around it.
A wooded hillside above Beşiktaş that was the walled garden of Yıldız Palace, reserved for the palace household under Abdülhamid II. The public outer section holds the Şale, Çadır and Malta pavilions, two artificial lakes and a porcelain factory still at work, and the Çadır and Malta pavilions now serve breakfast and tea with views over the Bosphorus.
Every Turkey town, place and dispatch, on one map.
Silk cocoons were traded for centuries in the arcaded hans of the first Ottoman capital, a city spread along the foot of Uludağ.
Twenty minutes of tomb road lie between the North Gate and the main ruins, and you will likely have most of it to yourself.
Across the Dardanelles at their narrowest point, this port looks straight over to the Gallipoli peninsula.
Hierapolis's theatre is the best-kept building on the hill, and the ruins around it see far fewer visitors than the terraces below.
The official pages this guide was checked against.
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