🇹🇷Istanbul

Sultan Ahmed Mosque

Sultanahmet Camii

The Blue Mosque was built for Ahmed I between 1609 and 1617, and it is the only imperial mosque in Istanbul that faces Hagia Sophia across open ground rather than standing apart from it.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Süleymaniye Mosque

Süleymaniye Camii

The Süleymaniye is Sinan's imperial mosque for Süleyman the Magnificent, founded in 1550 and inaugurated in 1557, and it is the one to see if you only see one.

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Topkapı Palace

Topkapi Sarayı

Topkapı was the seat of the Ottoman empire for nearly four centuries.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Galata Tower

Galata Kulesi

The Galata Tower is the Genoese watchtower on the hill across the Golden Horn, built in 1348 as the Christea Turris — the Tower of Christ — at the highest point of their walled colony.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Main Building of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums

İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzesi

This is the main building of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, the oldest purpose-built museum in Turkey and the one the whole complex is named after.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Hippodrome of Constantinople

Sultanahmet Meydanı

The Hippodrome was where Constantinople did its politics.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Grand Bazaar

Kapalı Çarşı

The Grand Bazaar is a covered city of shops that Mehmed II began building in the winter of 1455/56, within three years of taking Constantinople.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Basilica Cistern

Yerebatan Sarnıcı

The Basilica Cistern is a sixth-century water store the size of a cathedral, under a street in Sultanahmet, built for Justinian I. Historical texts say 7,000 enslaved people built it.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Taksim Square

Taksim Meydanı

Taksim Square is where modern Istanbul argues with itself. It is the head of İstiklal Avenue, the terminus of the metro, the hub of the municipal buses, and the place the country's politics spills into when it spills anywhere.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Maiden's Tower

Kız Kulesi

The Maiden's Tower stands on an islet in the Bosphorus, 200 m off the Üsküdar shore, and it is the one Istanbul landmark you cannot walk to.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Üsküdar

Chora Church

Kariye Camii

The Chora holds the best late Byzantine mosaic and fresco cycle anywhere, and it is a long way from the tram, which is why the people who go are the people who came for it.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Hagia Irene

Aya İrini Kilisesi

Hagia Irene is the Byzantine church that was never made into a mosque, and it is the reason it still looks like a Byzantine church inside.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Walls of Constantinople

İstanbul Surları

The Theodosian walls kept Constantinople for a thousand years, and they are still standing across the city. They were built under Theodosius II, who reigned from 402 to 450.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Eyüpsultan

Obelisk of Theodosius

Theodosius Dikilitaşı

Older than almost everything around it by two thousand years, the Obelisk of Theodosius is a piece of pharaonic Egypt standing in the middle of a Turkish square.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Yıldız Palace

Yıldız Sarayı

Yıldız is the palace a frightened sultan built uphill.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beşiktaş

Aqueduct of Valens

Bozdoğan Su Kemeri

Bozdoğan Kemeri, the Aqueduct of Valens, is the surviving bridge of the water system that made a city of a million people possible on a peninsula with almost no rivers.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Galata Mevlevihanesi

Galata Mevlevihanesi Müzesi

The Galata Mevlevihanesi is the oldest Mevlevi dervish lodge in Istanbul, established in 1491 during the reign of Bayezid II on land that had belonged to İskender Pasha, a prominent governor of the period.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Column of Constantine

Çemberlitaş Sütunu

A single shaft of Egyptian porphyry stands in the middle of Çemberlitaş Square on Divan Yolu, banded with iron and blackened along one side.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Fatih Istanbul Mosque

Fatih Camii

The Fatih Mosque is where Mehmed the Conqueror is buried, and it stands on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles — the mausoleum of the Roman emperors, Constantine the Great among them.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Rumeli Hisarı

Rumeli Hisarı is a fortress built to close a strait, and everything about it follows from that one job.

• Must see
• Museum
• Sarıyer

Anadoluhisarı

Anadolu Hisarı

Anadoluhisarı is a siege engine in stone, built sixty years before the siege it was meant for.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beykoz

Şehzade Mosque

Şehzadebaşı Camii

The Şehzade is the mosque Süleyman the Magnificent built for a dead son, and it is where Sinan learned to build the ones that followed.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Beylerbeyi Palace

Beylerbeyi Sarayı

Beylerbeyi Palace is the Ottoman court's summer address on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, built for Sultan Abdulaziz between 1861 and 1865 by the architect Sarkis Balyan, with Hagop Balyan named alongside him.

• Must see
• Museum
• Üsküdar

Yedikule Fortress

Yedikule Zindanları

Yedikule is a fortress built out of an older monument.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

İstanbul Rum Ortodoks Patrikhanesi

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is the senior see of the Eastern Orthodox world, and it occupies a walled compound in Fener on the Golden Horn.

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Fatih

İmrahor Mosque

İmrahor Camii

İmrahor Camii is a small working neighbourhood mosque in Salacak, the shore quarter that runs south from Üsküdar square on Istanbul's Asian side.

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Üsküdar

The Museum of Innocence

Masumiyet Müzesi

A novel and a building made in parallel, and neither is quite the illustration of the other.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Çırağan Palace

Çırağan Sarayı

Çırağan Palace is the last of the great Ottoman waterfront palaces, and the only one a visitor cannot walk into.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beşiktaş

Walled Obelisk

Örme Dikilitaş

The Walled Obelisk, Örme Dikilitaş in Turkish and literally the masonry obelisk, stands 32 m tall on the spine of the old Hippodrome in what is now Sultanahmet Square, west of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Rüstem Pasha Mosque

Rüstem Paşa Camii

Rüstem Pasha Mosque does not sit on the street.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum

Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi

The Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum is housed in the Ibrahim Pasha Palace, a stone mansion of 1524 that belonged to Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, the second grand vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Bulgarian St. Stephen Church

Sveti Stefan Bulgar Kilisesi

Bulgarian St. Stephen Church is the cast-iron Bulgarian Orthodox church on the Golden Horn shore in Balat. Istanbul’s official visitor portal dates the present building to 1898 and identifies Hovsep Aznavur as its architect.

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Palace of the Porphyrogenitus

Tekfur Sarayı is the last Byzantine palace in Istanbul still standing to its full height, and it survives because it was never important enough to be worth demolishing.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Serpent Column

Yılanlı Sütun

A battle trophy from 479 BC, standing in a hole in a square in Istanbul.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

The Stone of Million

Milyon Taşı

What survives is a single weathered pillar fragment standing in a sunken plot beside the street, and it is the remnant of the Milion — the point from which the Eastern Roman Empire measured itself.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Zeyrek Mosque

Zeyrek Molla Camii

Zeyrek Camii was the Monastery of Christ Pantokrator, and after Hagia Sophia it is the largest Byzantine religious building still standing in Istanbul.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Nuruosmaniye Mosque

Nuruosmaniye Camisi

The Nuruosmaniye is where Ottoman architecture stopped being Ottoman in the classical sense. Begun in 1748 under Mahmud I and finished in 1755 under his brother Osman III, it is the first monumental Ottoman baroque building.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Republic Monument

Cumhuriyet Anıtı

The Republic Monument stands in the middle of Taksim Square and is the founding statement of the Turkish Republic rendered in bronze and marble.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Rahmi M. Koç Museum

Rahmi M. Koç Müzesi

Istanbul's museum of industry, transport and communication sits on the northern shore of the Golden Horn at Hasköy, well upstream of the tourist city and reached by water more pleasantly than by road.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

İstanbul Modern

İstanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi

Istanbul Modern opened on 11 December 2004 as Turkey's first museum of modern and contemporary art, installed in Entrepo No. 4, a customs warehouse from the 1950s standing on the Karaköy quay.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Pera Museum

Pera Müzesi

Pera Museum is a private art museum on the Beyoğlu ridge, established on 8 June 2005 by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation. Its building was not built as a museum.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Miniatürk

Miniatürk Açıkhava Müzesi

Miniatürk opened on 2 May 2003 on the northeastern shore of the Golden Horn, and the idea behind it is straightforward: shrink the architecture of Turkey and the former Ottoman world to one twenty-fifth of full size and lay it…

• Must see
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Theodosius Cistern

Şerefiye Sarnıcı

Şerefiye Sarnıcı is a Roman water tank that spent most of the last three centuries with a building sitting on top of it.

• Must see
• Museum
• Fatih

Yavuz Selim Mosque

Yavuz Sultan Selim Cami

Yavuz Selim Mosque crowns the top of the fifth hill of the historic peninsula, above the Golden Horn, and it is a memorial as much as it is a mosque.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Küçüksu Pavillion

Küçüksu Kasrı

Kucuksu is a kasir and not a saray, and the whole visit turns on that distinction.

• Must see
• Museum
• Beykoz

Camondo stairs

Kamondo Merdivenleri

The Camondo Stairs are a short public stairway in Galata built by a banker so that he could get to work.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Column of the Goths

Gotlar Sütunu

Near the Sarayburnu end of Gülhane Park, well away from the gate most visitors use, a single fluted shaft with a Corinthian capital stands among the trees carrying a Latin inscription: FORTVNAE REDVCI OB DEVICTOS GOTHOS — to Fortuna, who…

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Column of Marcian

Kıztaşı

A single granite column stands in a small railed square off Kıztaşı Caddesi in Fatih, and almost everybody who has heard of Istanbul has never heard of it.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Kılıç Ali Pasha Mosque

Kılıç Ali Paşa Camii

The man who paid for this mosque was born Giovanni Dionigi Galeni in Le Castella, in Calabria, around 1519.

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Çamlıca Tower

Çamlıca Televizyon Kulesi

Çamlıca Tower stands on Büyük Çamlıca Hill on the Asian side, the highest point overlooking the Bosphorus, and opened on 29 May 2021.

• High
• Historic monument
• Üsküdar

Monument of Liberty

Abide-i Hürriyet

The Monument of Liberty is an Ottoman-era memorial in Şişli commemorating the officers and soldiers who died putting down the countercoup of 31 March 1909 against the Young Turk constitutional government, an episode known in Turkish as the 31 Mart…

• High
• Historic monument
• Şişli

Çiçek Pasajı

Çiçek Pasajı is a covered arcade off İstiklal Caddesi in Beyoğlu, built in 1876 to the design of the architect Kleanthis Zannos and opened as the Cité de Péra.

• High
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Tiled Kiosk

Çinili Köşk

The Tiled Kiosk, Çinili Köşk, is the oldest non-religious Ottoman building in Istanbul and the odd one out among the city's Ottoman monuments: it does not look Ottoman.

• High
• Museum
• Fatih

Great Palace Mosaic Museum

Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi

Beneath the Arasta Bazaar, the row of shops behind the Blue Mosque, lies a strip of floor that belonged to the Great Palace of Constantinople.

• High
• Museum
• Fatih

Fenari Isa Mosque

Molla Fenari İsa Camii

Fenari Isa Mosque is two Byzantine churches joined into one building, and understanding that is most of understanding the place.

• High
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Cistern of Philoxenos

Binbirdirek Sarnıcı

Turks call it Binbirdirek, "a thousand and one columns", which is a way of saying "a great many" rather than a count. The real figure is 224.

• High
• Museum
• Fatih

Istanbul Naval Museum

Deniz Müzesi

The Istanbul Naval Museum was founded in 1897 by Bozcaadali Hasan Husnu Pasha, then Ottoman Minister of the Navy, which makes it the first military museum established in Turkey.

• High
• Museum
• Beşiktaş

Column of Arcadius

Arkadyos Sütunu

The Column of Arcadius is one of Constantinople's lost monuments, and what is left of it is the reason to come: a stump of imperial propaganda wedged between apartment blocks in Fatih.

• High
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Sakıp Sabancı Museum

Sabancı Üniversitesi Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi

This is a museum that used to be somebody's house, and the house has an unusually crowded guest list. From 1848 to 1884 the Emirgan mansion passed through a succession of high-ranking pasha families and Egyptian khedives.

• High
• Museum
• Sarıyer

Yeni Üsküdar Mosque

Yeni Valide Camii

Step off the ferry at Üsküdar and this is the complex immediately in front of you, hard against the square rather than set back from it.

• High
• Historic monument
• Üsküdar

Jewish Museum of Turkey

500. Yıl Vakfı Türk Musevileri Müzesi

The Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews tells the story of a community that has been in this city far longer than most of the monuments around it.

• High
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Bodrum Mosque

Bodrum Camii

Bodrum Mosque is the church of the Myrelaion, built around 920 by Romanos I Lekapenos as the chapel of his own palace, and it is one of the very few tenth-century churches of Constantinople still standing.

• High
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Yoros Castle

Yoros Kalesi

Yoros Castle stands on the headland where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea, which is the whole explanation for it.

• High
• Historic monument
• Beykoz

Atatürk Cultural Center

Atatürk Kültür Merkezi

The Ataturk Cultural Center closes the eastern side of Taksim Square, and it is the second building of that name to do so.

• High
• Historic monument
• Beyoğlu

Ihlamur Palace

Ihlamur Kasrı (Merasim Köşkü)

Ihlamur is not a palace in the sense that Dolmabahçe is a palace.

• High
• Museum
• Beşiktaş

Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı

Haseki Hürrem Hamamı

The Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamam is a twin bathhouse commissioned by Hürrem Sultan, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, and designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan, built starting in 1556 between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

• High
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Bulgarian Exarchate

Eksarhhane

Eksarhhane is a historic building in the Fener district that housed the seat of the Bulgarian Exarchate, the autocephalous Bulgarian Orthodox church established in 1870 and centred in Istanbul until the Ottoman Empire's Bulgarian population and administration shifted after the…

• High
• Historic monument
• Fatih

German Fountain

Alman Çeşmesi

The German Fountain is an octagonal, neo-Byzantine gazebo fountain standing in Sultanahmet Square, a gift from German Emperor Wilhelm II to Sultan Abdul Hamid II to mark the Kaiser's 1898 state visit to Istanbul.

• High
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Kalenderhane Mosque

Kalenderhane Camii

Kalenderhane Camii is a Byzantine church that became a mosque, standing in Fatih immediately beside the Valens Aqueduct.

• High
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Fountain of Ahmed III

III. Ahmet Çeşmesi

The Fountain of Ahmed III stands just outside the Imperial Gate of Topkapı Palace, built in 1728 by Sultan Ahmed III during the Tulip Period, the era of Ottoman architecture known for its ornate, floral Baroque-influenced style.

• High
• Historic monument
• Fatih

New Mosque

Yeni Camii

The New Mosque at Eminönü took sixty-six years to build, most of them spent as a ruin. Safiye Sultan — wife of Murad III and later Valide Sultan — ordered it in 1597.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Istanbul Aviation Museum

İstanbul Havacılık Müzesi

The Istanbul Aviation Museum is operated by the Turkish Air Force Academy in Yeşilköy, on the grounds of Istanbul's former main airport, and covers the history of Turkish military and civil aviation from the Ottoman era onward.

• Notable
• Museum
• Bakırköy

Ortaköy Mosque

Büyük Mecidiye Camii

Its proper name is the Büyük Mecidiye Camii, the Great Mosque of Sultan Abdülmecid, and it stands at the water's edge of the Ortaköy pier square in Beşiktaş, on the European shore of the Bosphorus.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Beşiktaş

Church of St. Polyeuctus

Ayios Polieuktos Kilisesi

For a few years in the sixth century this was the largest church in Constantinople, and it was built by a woman making a point.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque

Hz. Cabir Cami

A working neighbourhood mosque in Ayvansaray that began as a Byzantine church, and nobody is entirely sure which one.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Church of St. George

Aya Yorgi Patrikhane Kilisesi

The Church of St George in Fener is the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the senior see of the Orthodox Christian world, and from the street it is deliberately unassuming.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Galatasaray Museum

Galatasaray Müzesi

Galatasaray Museum is the official museum of Galatasaray Sports Club, one of Turkey's most prominent multi-sport organizations. Located in Istanbul, the institution preserves and displays materials related to the club's extensive history across football, basketball, and other athletic disciplines.

• Notable
• Museum
• Beyoğlu

Little Hagia Sophia

Küçük Ayasofya Camii

The Little Hagia Sophia is the church Justinian built before the great one, and it is where the idea was tried out. It went up between 527 and 536, dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam

İslam bilim ve teknoloji tarihi müzesi

The museum occupies the Has Ahırlar, the former imperial stables, a long low range on the edge of Gülhane Park below the Topkapı walls, and it opened on 25 May 2008 under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

• Notable
• Museum
• Fatih

Atatürk Museum

Atatürk Museum, Şişli

This is a rented house on a busy Şişli avenue that happens to be where the Turkish Republic was decided upon. The building is a three-storey house put up in 1908.

• Notable
• Museum
• Şişli

Prison of Anemas

The Prison of Anemas is a historic Byzantine structure located within the walls of Istanbul, Turkey. It forms part of the larger Blachernae Palace complex in the northwestern section of the city.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Aviation Martyrs' Monument

Hava Şehitleri Anıtı

The Aviation Martyrs' Monument, known locally as Hava Şehitleri Anıtı, stands as a memorial dedicated to aviators who lost their lives in service.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Çamlıca Mosque

Büyük Çamlıca Camii

Çamlıca Mosque, known locally as Büyük Çamlıca Camii, is a major Islamic religious complex situated on Çamlıca Hill in Istanbul, Turkey. The mosque stands as one of the most prominent contemporary mosque constructions in the country.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Üsküdar

Gazi Atik Ali Pasha Mosque

Gazi Atik Ali Paşa Camii

Gazi Atik Ali Pasha Mosque is an Ottoman mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. Its local name is Gazi Atik Ali Paşa Camii. The structure represents historical Islamic architecture within the urban fabric of the city.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Fatih

Church of St. Anthony of Padua

Sent Antuan Katolik Kilisesi

Behind a gate on İstiklal Avenue, set back at the end of its own courtyard, stands the largest Catholic church in Istanbul.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Beyoğlu

Pammakaristos Church

Fethiye Camii

The Pammakaristos was the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate for 131 years after the fall of Constantinople, and its side chapel holds mosaics second only to the Chora's.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Fatih

Yıldız Clock Tower

Yıldız Clock Tower is a historic clock tower situated in the Yıldız district of Istanbul, Turkey. The structure stands as an architectural landmark within the broader Yıldız Palace complex area, reflecting Ottoman-era design influences.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Beşiktaş

Museum of the Ancient Orient

Eski Şark Eserleri Müzesi

The Museum of the Ancient Orient, known locally as Eski Şark Eserleri Müzesi, is an archaeological museum in Istanbul. It forms part of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums complex.

• Notable
• Museum
• Fatih

Büyükada Greek Orthodox Orphanage

Büyükada Eski Rum Yetimhanesi

The Büyükada Greek Orthodox Orphanage, known locally as Büyükada Eski Rum Yetimhanesi, stands on Büyükada, the largest of Istanbul's Princes' Islands. This timber structure ranks among the world's largest wooden buildings.

• Notable
• Historic monument
• Adalar

Eyüp Sultan Mosque

Eyüp Sultan Camii

This is the mosque Ottoman Istanbul built around a grave rather than around a view.

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Eyüpsultan

Arif Sarıca Mansion

Arif Sarıca Köşkü

• Must see
• Historic monument
• Kadıköy

Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church

Mor Efrem Süryani Kadim Ortodoks Kilisesi

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Bakırköy

Şişli Armenian Cemetery

Ermenî Kabristanı

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Şişli

Mimar Sinan Mosque

Mimar Sinan Camii

• Must see
• Place of worship
• Ataşehir

Kadıköy French Catholic Church

Notre-Dame De L'Assomption

• High
• Place of worship
• Kadıköy

Church of Our Lady of Częstochowa in Polonezköy

Czestochowalı Meryem Ana Kilisesi

• High
• Place of worship
• Beykoz

Kısıklı Mosque

Kısıklı Abdullahağa Camii

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Üsküdar

Muhsine Hatun Mescidi ve Tekkesi

İbrahim Paşa Muhsine Hatum Cami

• Notable
• Place of worship
• Fatih