Istanbul travel guide

Top 10 sights in Istanbul

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Arild Vågen · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hagia Sophia

   A church built between 532 and 537 for Justinian, whose dome of thirty-one metres was the largest in the world for nearly a thousand years. It became a mosque in 1453, a museum in 1935, and a mosque again in 2020; the Byzantine mosaics remain in the upper gallery.

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2. 

   2© Cplakidas · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Constantinople

   The name of this city from 330, when Constantine refounded it as the capital of the Roman empire, until the Ottoman conquest of 1453 and beyond. It became Istanbul officially only in 1930.

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3. 

   3© Moonik · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sultan Ahmed Mosque

   A mosque built between 1609 and 1616 for Ahmed I, with six minarets — a number that caused offence until a seventh was added at Mecca. The blue in the name comes from more than twenty thousand İznik tiles lining the upper walls.

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4. 

   4© Bjørn Christian Tørrissen · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Topkapı Palace

   The palace Mehmed II began in 1459 and from which the Ottomans ruled for close to four centuries, until the court moved to Dolmabahçe in 1856. The harem is ticketed separately, and the treasury holds an eighty-six carat diamond found, by legend, in a rubbish heap.

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   5

   Byzantium

   The Greek colony founded on this headland about 657 BC by settlers from Megara and named for their leader Byzas. It kept the name for nearly a thousand years, until Constantine made it his capital.

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   Süleymaniye Mosque

   Sinan's largest mosque in the city, built between 1550 and 1557 for Suleiman the Magnificent on the third hill above the Golden Horn. Suleiman and Roxelana lie in the garden behind, and the complex once ran a hospital, a kitchen and four schools.

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7. 

   7© Juraj Patekar · CC BY 2.0

   Golden Horn

   The inlet that gave the city its harbour, some seven kilometres long and deep enough for a fleet. A chain was drawn across its mouth in 1453, so Mehmed had his ships dragged overland on greased timbers to get behind it.

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   8

   Galata Tower

   A stone tower built by Genoa in 1348 at the top of its walled colony, sixty-seven metres high. An Ottoman chronicler records a man gliding from it across the Bosphorus in the 1630s; the viewing gallery is now reached by lift and a last flight of stairs.

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   Beyoğlu

   District on the north bank of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, known as Pera until 1923. Foreign embassies stood here under the Ottomans, and their buildings are now consulates.

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10. 

    10© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Dolmabahçe Palace

    The palace the Ottomans built between 1843 and 1856 in European style, having decided Topkapı was no longer grand enough. It has two hundred and eighty-five rooms and a four-and-a-half tonne chandelier; Atatürk died here in 1938 and its clocks were stopped at five past nine.

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1. 

   1© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica Cistern

   A cistern built under Justinian in 532 to hold water for the palace, its roof carried on three hundred and thirty-six columns taken from older buildings. Two of them stand on Medusa heads, one sideways and one upside down.

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2. 

   2© The original uploader was -jha- at German Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Walls of Constantinople

   The triple line of land walls raised by Theodosius II between 408 and 413 — ditch, outer wall, inner wall, six and a half kilometres across the peninsula. They held every attacker for a thousand years until cannon breached them in 1453.

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3. 

   3© Masygreen · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Grand Bazaar

   A covered market begun in 1461, the year after the conquest, and grown into sixty-one streets under one roof with some four thousand shops. Haggling is expected; getting lost is the usual way of seeing it.

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4. 

   4© Vogueeatss · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fatih Istanbul Mosque

   A mosque built between 1463 and 1470 on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles, the burial place of Byzantine emperors. An earthquake destroyed it in 1766 and it was rebuilt to a new design; Mehmed the Conqueror's tomb stands behind it.

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   5

   Maiden's Tower

   A tower on a rock two hundred metres off the Asian shore, where the strait is at its narrowest. There has been a structure here since antiquity; the present one dates from the eighteenth century and worked as a lighthouse and a quarantine station.

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6. 

   6© Lenka Janochová · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hagia Irene

   A Byzantine church in the first courtyard of Topkapı, rebuilt after the riots of 532 and never converted into a mosque — the Ottomans used it as an arsenal. Its plain interior and mosaic cross survive, and it is now used for concerts.

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7. 

   7© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Obelisk of Theodosius

   An Egyptian obelisk cut for Thutmose III around 1450 BC and re-erected in the hippodrome by Theodosius in 390. Only the upper third survived the journey; the marble base beneath it shows the emperor watching the races.

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8. 

   8© Fargoh · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Taksim Square

   The square at the head of İstiklal Avenue and the centre of the modern city, named after the water distribution point that once stood here. The Republic Monument of 1928 is at its centre and a restored red tram runs the length of the avenue.

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   9

   Chora Church

   A Byzantine church whose mosaics and frescoes, paid for around 1320 by the scholar Theodore Metochites, are the finest of their period anywhere. It became a mosque, then a museum, and reopened for prayer in 2024 with the images screened at prayer times.

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    10

    Çırağan Palace

    An Ottoman palace built on the Bosphorus in the 1860s, gutted by fire in 1910 and left a shell for eighty years. It was rebuilt as a hotel that opened in 1991, and the old palace block is now its most expensive suites.

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