Five days in Istanbul: Eleven Centuries of Empires on Three Hills

Finished in 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I and still the defining silhouette of the skyline, with six minarets, which raised eyebrows at the time because the mosque at Mecca had six as well. Enter from the courtyard on the southwest side, leave your shoes at the door, and look up: the blue in the name is some twenty thousand İznik tiles in the upper walls.

Built as the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus around 530 AD, a few years before Hagia Sophia and possibly as its rehearsal. It became a mosque in the early 1500s and has kept a village calm ever since, with carved marble capitals, an inscription running round the gallery, and craft workshops in the old madrasa courtyard outside.

Walk two or three streets back from the tram line before choosing anywhere. The rule in this district is simple: if somebody is standing outside the door inviting you in, keep going.

Completed in 537 AD, and for more than a thousand years the largest enclosed space in the world; nothing beat it until Seville cathedral in 1520. The trick is the pendentives, four curved triangles that carry a 30 m dome down onto four piers, and it is worth standing still under the middle of it before you look at anything else. Church, then mosque from 1453, then a museum, and a mosque again since 2020, so dress as you would for one.

Home and government of the Ottoman sultans for four centuries, arranged as four courts that grow quieter and more private as you go in. The kitchens hold the porcelain, the third court holds the treasury and the relics, and the fourth opens onto a terrace above the water. Allow three hours, bring water, and note that it closes one day a week, on Tuesday.

Walk five minutes downhill away from the palace gates and the prices halve. Lokantas here feed office workers at proper hours and will still serve you at three.

Justinian's water store, finished in 532 and held up by 336 columns scavenged from older buildings, including two carved Medusa heads used as bases, one on her side and one upside down. There is a boardwalk, coloured lighting and music now instead of the rowing boats of thirty years ago, which is either atmospheric or too much depending on your mood.

Sinan's mosque for Süleyman the Magnificent, finished in the 1550s and the one architects come to see: a wide, calm, grey and white interior with light coming in low from every side. It anchored a whole charitable complex of schools, a soup kitchen and a hospital, and the small garden behind holds the tombs of Süleyman and of Hürrem Sultan, the Ukrainian-born concubine he married.

Sinan again, in 1564, for the grand vizier who had married into the family. It is small, raised above a row of shops so the rents paid for its upkeep, and lined inside and out with İznik tiles from the years when that workshop was at its peak. Look for the staircase on the street corner; there is no grand entrance.

Grilled mackerel in half a loaf, eaten standing at the waterfront where the ferries dock, with pickled turnip juice if you are feeling brave. It costs very little and it is a proper Istanbul lunch.

The Genoese built it in the 14th century at the top of their walled colony, and its parapet still gives the best single view of the city: the whole old peninsula laid out across the water with Topkapı, the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia on the ridge. A lift takes you most of the way, two flights of stairs do the rest, and the last hour before sunset is worth booking ahead for.

285 rooms and 43 halls, built in the 1850s when the sultans left Topkapı for something that would impress European ambassadors, and paid for with borrowed money the treasury never recovered from. It ran the empire for its last sixty years, and Atatürk died in a small bedroom here in 1938; the palace clocks read five past nine. Allow three hours and take the free audio guide.

A neighbourhood square right on the water, where a small baroque mosque of the 1850s sits directly beneath the first Bosphorus bridge, which is the photograph everyone takes and it does deserve it. The local speciality is kumpir, a baked potato mashed with butter and cheese and then loaded with whatever you point at.

The little tower on its own islet off the Asian shore, defensive since the Byzantines strung a chain from it across the mouth of the Bosphorus, and romantic ever since because of a story about a princess, a prophecy and a snake in a fruit basket. Small boats run out from Salacak; the view back at the old city from the water at dusk is the reason to go.

A monastery church of the 11th century, rebuilt after an earthquake, whose mosaics and frescoes come from a burst of work around 1315 and are among the finest late Byzantine art anywhere. Plastered over when the building became a mosque around 1500, uncovered in the 1950s, and left visible when it was made a mosque again in 2020. Visitors are asked out about fifteen minutes before each prayer and let back in afterwards.

Steep lanes of painted timber houses running down to the water, with antique shops, bakeries and a great many people taking photographs on the famous staircase. It was the Jewish quarter for centuries and the Greek one next door, and the churches and synagogues are still scattered through it behind plain walls.

The cafes on Vodina Caddesi do a long breakfast well into the afternoon, which is the correct last meal in Turkey. Leave plenty of time for the trip out to the airport if you are flying from the European side.