ISTANBUL · TÜRKIYE
Two continents, three empires, one city.
Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, Topkapi and the Grand Bazaar. Sunset cruises on the Bosphorus, the hammams, the meze tables, and the ferry that crosses from Europe to Asia in twenty minutes.
Only in Istanbul
Three things only Istanbul can give you.
Old mosques, boat trips and bazaars turn up in plenty of cities. A capital of two empires that sits astride two continents does not.
Europe and Asia, one day
The City on Two Continents
Istanbul is the only great city that stands on two continents at once. A ferry or a private boat carries you from the European shore to the Asian side in twenty minutes, so you can take breakfast in Karakoy, cross the Bosphorus, and be drinking tea in a Kadikoy back street by lunch. Nowhere else lets you walk between two continents in a single morning.
- 1 Bosphorus Yacht Cruise Experience: Visit the Asian Side
- 2 Bosphorus Yacht Cruise with Stopover on the Asian Side – (Morning or Afternoon)
- 3 Bosphorus Explorer: 3-Hour Cruise with Asian Side Visit
Fifteen centuries
Hagia Sophia
For a thousand years it was the largest cathedral on earth, then an imperial mosque, then a museum, and a mosque once more. Step in under the great floating dome and Byzantine gold mosaics and Ottoman calligraphy meet in a single glance. There is nowhere else where 1,500 years of two empires share one roof.
- 1 Istanbul: Blue Mosque & Hagia Sophia Guided Tour w/ Tickets
- 2 Istanbul: Hagia Sophia Skip-the-Line Ticket and Audio Guide
- 3 Istanbul: Basilica Cistern & Hagia Sophia Combo Ticket
The strait at golden hour
Sunset on the Bosphorus
The strait that divides the continents is Istanbul’s great avenue. Sail it as the light turns gold, past wooden waterside mansions, marble palaces and old fortress walls, with the call to prayer drifting across the water from both shores at once. The one view that says Istanbul in a glance.
- 1 Istanbul: Sunset or Day Small-Group Yacht Cruise with Snacks
- 2 Istanbul: Bosphorus Sunset Cruise on Yacht with Live Guide
- 3 Istanbul: Bosphorus Sunset Cruise with Drinks & Snack
If you do one thing
Start with the experience everyone books.
More travellers book this than anything else in Istanbul. If you only fix one thing in the diary before you fly, make it this.
The classics
Istanbul's Most Popular Tours & Tickets
Bosphorus cruises, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi and the hammams. The experiences most travellers book first.
Where to begin
The experiences an Istanbul trip is built around.
Bosphorus cruises, the great sights, the hammams, the food and the dervishes. The experiences most travellers plan a trip around, and the best of each.
The big question
Which Bosphorus cruise?
Almost every visitor gets out on the strait at least once, so the real question is when and how. Here is how the three kinds of cruise compare, and who each one suits.
The historic peninsula
Where two empires left their monuments.
Sultanahmet is the old city, and almost everything is within one walk of it. Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque face each other across a garden, Topkapi’s courtyards look out over the water, and the Basilica Cistern hides in the dark below the street. A single morning takes you through fifteen centuries of Byzantine and Ottoman rule.
See the great sights and tickets →The Turkish table
Meze, kebabs and a city that eats late.
Start with a long Turkish breakfast, graze meze across a dozen small plates, and pull apart a fish sandwich by the Galata Bridge. A food tour walks you through the spice market and the back-street lokantas the guidebooks miss, and finishes, of course, over tea and a tray of baklava.
Explore the food tours →Layers of empire
Three empires, written on one skyline.
Byzantium, then Constantinople, then Istanbul. A Roman hippodrome, the Byzantine dome of Hagia Sophia, Ottoman mosques crowning every hill, and the modern city around them all. A walking tour reads the layers in order, one capital stacked on the last.
Walk through the history →The hammam
Steam, scrub and centuries of marble.
The Turkish bath is a ritual, not a quick wash. You sweat on a heated marble slab under a domed ceiling pricked with light, get scoured with a coarse kese mitt, then vanish into a cloud of foam. Some of the grandest are 16th-century baths designed by the architect Sinan, still working exactly as they did for the Ottoman court.
- 1 Istanbul: Private Turkish Bath, Massage, and Spa in Old City
- 2 Istanbul: Private Turkish Bath, Sauna, and Massage
- 3 Istanbul Gedikpasa Historical Turkish Bath with Privacy Option
Istanbul after dark
Dervishes, folk nights and dinner on the water.
The evenings have their own register. Mevlevi dervishes turn in a slow, hypnotic sema beneath a single light; folk troupes bring out the drums and the regional dances over a long meze dinner; and the dinner cruises push off under the lit-up bridges with the city sliding past on both sides. Pick the mood and book the table early.
See all 91 evening experiences →The old city
Start with the great sights.
Hagia Sophia for the dome that changed architecture. The Blue Mosque for the tiles. Topkapi for the treasury and the Harem. The Basilica Cistern for the columns standing in the dark, Dolmabahçe for the waterfront palace, and Galata Tower for the view back over all of it.
By activity
Choose your kind of day.
A cruise if you want the strait. A food tour if you want the back streets. A hammam if you want to do nothing at all. Plus the dervishes, the bazaars, the two-continents day out and the workshops.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Istanbul? A long weekend that takes in the old city, the strait and the table.
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