Istanbul

A Byzantine tower stood near here until Crusaders destroyed it in 1204. The present structure was raised in 1348 as the Christea Turris, the high point of the fortified Genoese colony of Galata. It stands 62.6 metres, with the observation deck at 51.7 metres. After 1453 it served as a prison and, from 1717, as the city's fire lookout. It reopened as a museum after restoration in 2020.

€30 at the gate (some 2026 listings still show €20 — check on the day). Museum Pass Istanbul covers daytime entry 08:30–18:30; the evening session is ticketed separately.

Founded in 1891 by Osman Hamdi Bey, painter, archaeologist, and the man who wrote the Ottoman law that ended the free export of antiquities. It is three institutions on one site: the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, and the Tiled Kiosk of 1472, the oldest non-religious Ottoman building in the city. The collection holds the Sidon sarcophagi and the Egyptian–Hittite treaty of 1258 BC.

€15 for foreign visitors; Museum Pass Istanbul valid. Note: the Museum of the Ancient Orient, the Tiled Kiosk and several halls are closed for restoration — you are paying for a partial museum.

Turhan Hatice Sultan, mother of Mehmed IV, commissioned the bazaar as part of the New Mosque complex after the Great Fire of 1660. Rents from its shops paid for the mosque's upkeep, and the Turkish name, Mısır Çarşısı, points to the Egyptian revenues that financed the construction. It holds around 85 shops. The spice trade that named it is steadily giving way to sweets and souvenirs.

Free to enter.

Septimius Severus laid out a hippodrome here around AD 203, and Constantine the Great enlarged it after refounding the city in 324. It was the civic heart of Constantinople for a thousand years, and its racing factions were political blocs whose combined revolt in 532, the Nika riots, killed some 30,000 people. Three monuments from the central spina survive in place, the oldest carved at Karnak around 1490 BC.

Free public square

Balat became the centre of Istanbul's Jewish community in the late 15th century, after Bayezid II offered refuge to Jews expelled from Spain; at its height it held eighteen synagogues, of which three remain active. Fener was the Greek quarter and still houses the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Bulgarian church of St Stephen is the oddity: prefabricated in cast iron in Vienna and bolted together on the shore.

Free; a neighbourhood, not a ticketed site.

Moda was farmland until the 1870s, when wealthy non-Muslim families began building mansions on the headland between central Kadıköy and the Kurbağalıdere; the Armenian, Greek and Anglican churches still standing are the record of that settlement. Its landmark is the pier, designed by Vedat Tek in 1916–17, decommissioned in 1986 and reopened after restoration in August 2022.

Free; a neighbourhood, not a ticketed site.

The Princes' Islands were where Byzantium exiled inconvenient royalty. Justin II built a convent and palace here in 569, and empresses including Irene and Zoe were confined on the island. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it became the summer retreat of Istanbul's Greek, Armenian and Jewish families, who built the timber villas that still define it. Leon Trotsky lived here from 1929 to 1933.

The island is free; you only pay the ferry fare (cheapest with İstanbulkart).

Built between 1861 and 1865 for Sultan Abdülaziz to designs by Sarkis Balyan, as a summer residence and state guest house. Empress Eugénie of France stayed in 1869 on her way to open the Suez Canal and had one of its windows reproduced at the Tuileries. After his deposition, Abdülhamid II spent his last years confined here and died in the palace in 1918. Its three storeys hold 24 rooms and six halls.

800₺ for foreign visitors. National Palaces ticketing.

Something has stood on this rock since antiquity; Alcibiades is thought to have built a customs post here after a naval victory in 408 BC. Alexios Komnenos put up a wooden tower in 1110, anchoring an iron chain across to the European shore. It was destroyed by earthquake in 1509 and fire in 1721, rebuilt in stone in 1763, and restored under Mahmud II in 1832. It reopened in May 2023 after restoration.

€27 entry + €8 compulsory boat transfer = approx. €35 all-in. Museum Pass Istanbul covers the tower but NOT the boat — you still pay at the pier.

The mosque marks the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad who by tradition died during the first Arab siege of Constantinople in the 670s. Mehmed II founded the complex in 1458, and the discovery of the grave was treated as a sign legitimising Ottoman rule. Every new sultan was girded here with the Sword of Osman. Selim III rebuilt the present mosque, completing it in 1800.

Free.

Founded in 1491 under Bayezid II on land that had belonged to İskender Paşa, this is the oldest Mevlevi house in Istanbul. It burned in 1766 and was repaired under Selim III, Mahmud II and Abdülmecid, which is where the semahane's Baroque detailing comes from. It operated continuously until the Republic closed all dervish lodges in 1925, and reopened as a museum after restoration between 1967 and 1972.

€7 for foreign visitors; free with Museum Pass Istanbul. Sema (whirling dervish) ceremonies are a separate, limited ticket — reserve ahead.

The Büyük Mecidiye Mosque was completed in the mid-1850s for Sultan Abdülmecid I by Garabet and Nigoğayos Balyan, the architects then finishing Dolmabahçe, in a style mixing Ottoman baroque with neoclassical. The quay village around it was historically a mixed Greek, Armenian and Jewish settlement, and a synagogue and two churches still stand nearby. The 1973 bridge now frames it. It reopened in 2014.

Free; the mosque and the waterfront square have no entry charge.

The museum occupies the İbrahim Pasha Palace, built in 1524 on the edge of the Hippodrome for Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, Süleyman the Magnificent's grand vizier, who was strangled on the sultan's orders in 1536. Founded in 1914 and moved here in 1983, the collection holds more than 40,000 objects, including 17,000 manuscripts and early Qur'anic fragments from Damascus.

Construction began in April 1452 and the fortress was finished the same year, a pace that was itself a form of psychological warfare. Built at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, it worked with the older Anadoluhisarı opposite to close the strait and cut Constantinople off from Black Sea grain before the siege of 1453. Its three towers are named for the viziers who supervised them. It became a museum in 1960.

€6 per the official Istanbul museums directory; some 2026 aggregators list up to €15 — verify at the gate. Museum Pass Istanbul valid.

Built between 1561 and 1563 by Mimar Sinan for Rüstem Pasha, grand vizier and son-in-law of Süleyman the Magnificent, and completed after Rüstem's death from his fortune. It carries some 2,300 İznik tiles in about 80 patterns, a density Sinan never repeated, and a showcase of the tomato-red pigment İznik potters had just mastered. Sinan raised it on a terrace above a range of shops.

Free entry