Explore Turkey
Places
Old neighborhoods, Sinan's mosques, bazaars, palaces and viewpoints, each one written from a visit.
Photo: Jorge Láscar from Australia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Harbor towns, calm bays and the turquoise water of the southwest, from Kuşadası to Kaş.
The Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar and the market streets around them: where Istanbul still shops.
Domes, tiles and wide courtyards: the great Ottoman mosques of Istanbul and Edirne, and how to visit them as a guest.
Collections worth your time, from Byzantine engineering to Ottoman tiles, with what to see first.
Balat, Kuzguncuk, Kadıköy, Galata and more: the neighborhoods where you see how Turkey actually lives.
Where the sultans lived and ruled: courtyards, harems, treasuries and terraces above the Bosphorus.
Towers, castle rocks and terraces: where to stand for the great views, and at what time of day.
About this section
Places
These are the places in Turkey we would walk you through ourselves: old neighborhoods, great mosques, covered markets, palaces and the viewpoints that tie them together. Each page tells the story of the place, then explains how to visit it, from opening hours to the best time of day.
Start in Istanbul. Sultanahmet holds Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome within a ten-minute walk, while Topkapı Palace rises behind them. Across the Golden Horn, Galata climbs to its Genoese tower. Then take the ferry to the Asian side for the food market of Kadıköy or the old lanes of Kuzguncuk.
Further afield, the places change character. Göreme sits among the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, and Mardin looks over the plain of Upper Mesopotamia. On the coast, Kaş and Datça keep the slow pace of the Mediterranean.
Many of these places belong to UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so rules on dress, photography and opening times matter. Each page gives them, so you can plan a day that flows instead of a list of tickets.
