Language · 11 published
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 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.
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
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.
619 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
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.
Artemis Tapinagi
The Temple of Ephesian Artemis is the Artemision sanctuary associated with ancient Ephesus, in Selçuk, İzmir Province.
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.
Efes
Ephesus is an extensive ancient city in western Türkiye, visited today as an archaeological site near Selçuk in İzmir Province. The city visible today was founded by Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, around 300 BC.
Sultanahmet Meydanı
The Hippodrome was where Constantinople did its politics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pergamon is the ancient hilltop site above Bergama in İzmir province, centred on the Acropolis and its monumental archaeological remains.
Halikarnas Mozolesi
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is an archaeological museum in Bodrum, Muğla, presenting surviving remains of one of the ancient world’s most celebrated monumental tombs.
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.
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.
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.
A regular Şehir Hatları commuter ferry across the Bosphorus, the everyday version of the Long Bosphorus Tour: no sightseeing stop, no turnaround at Anadolu Kavağı, just a working boat moving Istanbul residents between the European and Asian shores on a…
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.
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.
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.
Anadolu Hisarı
Anadoluhisarı is a siege engine in stone, built sixty years before the siege it was meant for.
Kapadokya
Cappadocia is a volcanic landscape in central Anatolia, shaped by erosion into valleys, ridges and fairy chimneys. It is a regional setting rather than one enclosed attraction, with open-air valleys, ridgelines and viewpoints spread around Göreme, Uçhisar, Ürgüp and Avanos.
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.
Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri
Derinkuyu underground city is a subterranean settlement beneath Derinkuyu in Nevşehir Province, descending to approximately 85 metres below ground.
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.
Letoon is a Lycian sacred centre near Kumluova in Seydikemer, Muğla. It served as the federal sanctuary of the Lycian League and as the cult centre of Xanthos, the nearby Lycian capital.
Çırağan Sarayı
Çırağan Palace is the last of the great Ottoman waterfront palaces, and the only one a visitor cannot walk into.
Gordion is an archaeological site and museum complex in Yassıhöyük, within Ankara Province’s Polatlı district. It preserves the setting of the Phrygian capital and combines indoor displays with monumental burial mounds and the Inner Castle Mound.
Tepemezarı
Thyatira is the ancient city underneath part of modern Akhisar, in Manisa province, and one of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation.
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.
Rüstem Paşa Camii
Rüstem Pasha Mosque does not sit on the street.
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.
Yılanlı Sütun
A battle trophy from 479 BC, standing in a hole in a square in Istanbul.
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.
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.
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.
Perga
Perge is an ancient Greco-Roman city near Antalya, known locally as Perga. It was a significant settlement in Pamphylia and later an important city under Roman rule.
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.
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.
Bodrum Kalesi
Bodrum Castle is a medieval fortress on a rocky peninsula between Bodrum’s two harbours, in the centre of town. The Knights of St John built it between 1406 and 1522, and the complex now houses the Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum.
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.
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.
Küçüksu Kasrı
Kucuksu is a kasir and not a saray, and the whole visit turns on that distinction.
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…
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.
Gülhane Parkı
Gülhane Park is 9.7 hectares of shaded slope below Topkapı Palace, and for most of its life it was not a park at all but the palace's outer garden — ground the public did not enter.
Kılıç Ali Paşa Camii
The man who paid for this mosque was born Giovanni Dionigi Galeni in Le Castella, in Calabria, around 1519.
Noel Baba Kilisesi
The Church of St Nicholas stands in the middle of Demre, the modern town that sits on top of ancient Myra on the Lycian coast of Antalya province.
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…
Göreme Millî Parkı
Göreme National Park is the wider landscape around Göreme village, while the principal visitor attraction in this listing is the Göreme Örenyeri, or Göreme Open-Air Museum.
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.
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.
Kaunos is an archaeological site in Çandır Mahallesi, within Köyceğiz in Muğla Province, reached from Dalyan by boat across the river channels. It preserves an ancient port city whose maritime character changed when alluvial deposits filled the coast.
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.
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.
Taksim Gezi Parkı
Gezi Park is a terraced park of four hectares — 9.88 acres — occupying the ground immediately north of Taksim Square in Beyoğlu.
Celsus Kütüphanesi
The Library of Celsus is a defining monument of Ephesus, near modern Selçuk in İzmir Province.
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.
Anıtkabir is the mausoleum complex of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Ankara’s Anıttepe hill. It is a national memorial and museum, with monumental architecture, landscaped grounds and galleries about the Turkish War of Independence and the founding period of the Republic.
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.
Yoros Kalesi
Yoros Castle stands on the headland where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea, which is the whole explanation for it.
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.
Ihlamur Kasrı (Merasim Köşkü)
Ihlamur is not a palace in the sense that Dolmabahçe is a palace.
Kayaköy Harabeleri
Kayaköy is an abandoned settlement on a steep hillside about 8 km south of Fethiye in Muğla Province. Roofless stone houses and communal buildings preserve the outline of a former town rather than a single monument.
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…
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.
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.
Milas is the modern town built around ancient Mylasa, a principal Carian centre with at least 5,000 years of history.
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.
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.
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.
Hz. Cabir Cami
A working neighbourhood mosque in Ayvansaray that began as a Byzantine church, and nobody is entirely sure which one.
Meryem Ana Evi
The House of the Virgin Mary is a Catholic pilgrimage shrine on Bülbül Mountain, about 9 km from Selçuk in İzmir Province. It is associated with the tradition that Mary spent her final years here.
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.
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.
Çeşme Deniz Savaşı
Battle of Chesma is a historical display within İzmir Çeşme Museum, set inside Çeşme Castle and specifically located on the lower floor of Umur Bey Tower.
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.
Knidos is an archaeological site at Tekir Burnu in Yazı Mahallesi, on the far western end of the Datça Peninsula.
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.
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.
Bafa Gölü
Lake Bafa is a protected lake landscape where Muğla’s eastern shore meets the wider setting of Aydın’s Söke district. The Kapıkırı side is the practical base for exploring the water, rocky shore and Beşparmak Mountains.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pergamon Kütüphanesi
The Library of Pergamum is a specific ruin in the upper city of the Bergama Acropolis, beside the Sanctuary of Athena in Bergama, İzmir.
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.
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.
Karain Mağarası
Karain Cave, known locally as Karain Mağarası, is a significant paleolithic archaeological site located near Antalya in southern Turkey.
Stratonikeia
Stratonicea is an open-air archaeological site in Eskihisar Mahallesi, within Muğla’s Yatağan district. It stands beside the Yatağan–Milas road, approximately 7 kilometres west of Yatağan.
Kolophon
Colophon is an archaeological settlement landscape in Menderes, İzmir, between present-day Değirmendere and Çamönü. It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Ionia, but it is not a compact museum or a single monumental ruin.
Köyceğiz Gölü
Lake Köyceğiz is a large natural lake beside Köyceğiz town in Muğla Province. Muğla Governorate gives its area as about 54 square kilometres, while the municipality describes the lake area as 6,300 hectares.
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.
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.
Eyüp Sultan Camii
This is the mosque Ottoman Istanbul built around a grave rather than around a view.
Klazomenai is an archaeological site on the Urla coast and was one of the twelve Ionian cities.
Teos is an ancient Ionian city in Sığacık, Seferihisar, on İzmir’s Aegean coast. Founded as an Ionian colony around 1000 BC, it developed as a maritime settlement connected to northern and southern harbours.
Polatlı is a municipal park in the centre of Polatlı, Ankara province, mapped as a leisure=park site.
Kamondo Merdivenleri
The Camondo Stairs are a short public stairway in Galata built by a banker so that he could get to work.
Faselis
Phaselis is an ancient Lycian city on the Mediterranean coast near Antalya. Founded by settlers from Rhodes around 690 BCE, it became a significant port with three harbours.
Hadrian Kapısı
Hadrian's Gate is a triumphal arch in Antalya's Kaleiçi district, built to commemorate the visit of Roman Emperor Hadrian to the city in 130 CE.
Source: OpenStreetMap contributors, Wikidata ·
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.
