Country guide
Türkiye is 783,562 km² across 81 provinces, most of it Anatolia in West Asia with East Thrace on the European side of the straits. It has three coasts to choose...
Photograph · Benh LIEU SONG · CC BY-SA 4.0
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
Türkiye is 783,562 km² across 81 provinces, most of it Anatolia in West Asia with East Thrace on the European side of the straits. It has three coasts to choose between — the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean to the west, the Mediterranean to the south — and an interior plateau that behaves like a different country in winter. Istanbul is the largest city and the economic centre, Ankara the capital and the second-largest, and the December 2025 population of 86,092,168 is weighted heavily to the west. A first trip is usually Istanbul and one coast; the plateau is the second trip.
Checked 2026-08-25
Every city catalogued in this country so far, ranked by how much there is to see.
Photograph · Ben Morlok · CC BY-SA 2.0
Photograph · Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · REHBER0770 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · Anonymous · CC0
Photograph · Dan Taylor · CC BY 2.0
Photograph · Dogaaunlu · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · Egemenakgul · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
84 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
Interests
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Küçüksu Kasrı
Kucuksu is a kasir and not a saray, and the whole visit turns on that distinction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ihlamur Kasrı (Merasim Köşkü)
Ihlamur is not a palace in the sense that Dolmabahçe is a palace.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi
The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is Ankara’s principal archaeological museum, presenting the cultures that shaped Anatolia through settlement, craft, belief and political change. It occupies the Ottoman-period Mahmutpaşa Bedesten and Kurşunlu Han in historic Ulus, beside Ankara Castle.
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.
Etnografya Müzesi
The Ethnography Museum of Ankara is an indoor museum devoted to Turkish cultural heritage and material culture. Its displays connect domestic life, religious practice, clothing, textiles and decorative arts through objects, workmanship and local traditions.
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.
Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi
Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museum is a national fine-arts museum in Ankara’s historic Altındağ area, at Hacettepe Mahallesi, Türk Ocağı Sokak No:1.
Selçuk Efes Müzesi
Ephesus Archaeological Museum is the principal museum for understanding ancient Ephesus in Selçuk, İzmir. It presents finds from worship, daily life, art and power, giving objects a closer scale than the open-air ruins.
Izmir Archaeology Museum
İzmir Archaeological Museum is a city museum in Konak, located inside Bahribaba Park at Yeşiltepe Mahallesi, Halil Rıfat Paşa Caddesi No: 4. The present museum building opened to visitors on 11 February 1984 and was built on a 5,000-square-metre site.
Manisa Müzesi
The Manisa Museum is the archaeological and ethnographic collection of the province, and as of 17 May 2025 it no longer stands where earlier guides to Manisa describe it.
Ten to fourteen days allows about four days in İstanbul and at least three around Antalya when coastal archaeology is included. Cappadocia needs its own regional stay, and a one-way coastal route is more workable than returning to the same city each night.
Türkiye's visa position varies by passport and purpose. Verify the rule through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, when eligible, use only the official e-Visa service rather than an intermediary.
İstanbul's two airports and Antalya are the principal gateways for this itinerary. Domestic flights cover long cross-country legs, coaches serve many city pairs, and high-speed rail is most useful on the İstanbul-Ankara axis rather than as a universal substitute.
April to May and September to October are broad choices for combining İstanbul with the Mediterranean coast. Cappadocia nights, inland heat, and Antalya's coastal conditions differ, so confirm weather for each overnight base.
Türkiye uses the Turkish lira (TRY). Keep lira available for smaller transport and market transactions even when cards are accepted, and review the displayed amount in TRY before agreeing to any card conversion.
Dial 112 for emergencies in Türkiye. Electricity is 230 V through Type C and F sockets; tap-water safety is not recorded here, so obtain current local advice at each stop.
