Ten days in Turkey: three places with almost nothing in common

Finished in 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I, with six minarets and a prayer hall lined with some twenty thousand İznik tiles, which is where the English name comes from. It is a working mosque: shoes off, shoulders and knees covered, hair covered for women, and no entry during the five daily prayers.

Justinian's underground water store, finished in 532 and held up by 336 columns taken from older buildings, two of them standing on carved Medusa heads. A boardwalk runs through it now, with lighting and music that some people find atmospheric and others find a bit much.

Walk two or three streets back from the main drag before choosing anywhere. If somebody is standing outside inviting you in, keep going.

Completed in 537 AD and for more than a thousand years the largest enclosed space in the world, until Seville cathedral in 1520. Four curved triangles carry the 30 m dome onto four piers, which is what makes the interior feel unsupported. It was a church, then a mosque from 1453, then a museum, and a mosque again since 2020.

Home and seat of government of the Ottoman sultans for four centuries, laid out as four courts that get quieter as you go in. The kitchens hold the porcelain, the third court holds the treasury and the relics, and the fourth opens onto terraces above the water. It closes one day a week, on Tuesday.

Five minutes downhill from the palace gates the prices halve. The lokantas here feed office workers and will still serve you at three o'clock.

Sinan's mosque for Süleyman the Magnificent, finished in the 1550s: wide, grey, calm, and lit from every side. It anchored a complex of schools, a hospital and a soup kitchen, and the garden behind holds the tombs of Süleyman himself and of Hürrem Sultan, the concubine he married.

Built by Sinan in 1564 for the grand vizier, raised above a row of shops whose rents paid for its upkeep, and covered inside and out with İznik tiles from the peak years of that workshop. Look for the staircase on the corner; there is no grand door.

The Genoese built it in the 14th century at the top of their walled colony. A lift takes you most of the way and the parapet gives the best single view in Istanbul, back across the water to the whole old peninsula. 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. 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 waterfront square where a small baroque mosque of the 1850s stands directly under the first Bosphorus bridge, which is the photograph everybody takes and it deserves it. The local speciality is kumpir, a baked potato mashed with butter and cheese and loaded with whatever you point at.

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

Flights run every couple of hours in summer from both Istanbul airports. Hotel shuttles meet the arrivals and take about an hour to Göreme, dropping at the door.

A narrow gorge running towards Uçhisar between walls riddled with cut niches. The name comes from the dovecotes: farmers carved thousands of pigeon holes into the soft rock and collected the droppings to manure the vineyards, which is why the floor of the valley is still full of grapes and apricots.

The low hill just above the village, ten minutes up a rough track, where everybody goes for sunset. There is a cafe at the top charging a markup nobody minds. Come back here before dawn on a morning when you are not flying.

Collection from the hotel in the dark, an hour or so in the air as the sun comes up, and a landing where the crew chase the basket across a field with a trailer. Cancellations are decided at the launch field and refunded.

A loop through the churches, refectories and kitchens of a monastery in use from around the 10th century, cut into the cliffs rather than built, which is why the paintings survive. Karanlık Kilise, the Dark Church, costs extra and is the one to pay for. Two to three hours, and try to move between the tour groups rather than behind them.

A chapel hollowed out of a free-standing fairy chimney a short walk from the village, known as the church of the evil eye, with rough, damaged wall paintings and usually nobody else there. Ask about the key to the hidden church nearby.

A shallow canyon of pale pink tuff northeast of the village, with vineyards on the floor and chapels cut into the walls, some still showing painted crosses. Easy walking, but the path braids constantly; keep heading downhill and west.

The next valley over and the redder of the two, which is why every minibus tour parks at the viewpoint above it at sunset. Walking through the bottom gets you the colour without the car park.

A village under a honeycombed cliff, half of it abandoned when the rock face was declared unsafe, with an old church perched above the collapsed section. The lower streets are still lived in and there is somewhere to sit down at the end of the walk.

Direct flights run daily. From the airport, regional trains and the suburban line both reach Selçuk in about an hour; a pre-booked transfer costs more and saves the change.

Small, well laid out, and full of the best pieces from the site up the road: statues, glass, coins, sarcophagi, and the two famous Artemis figures, the goddess covered from chest to waist in rows of objects variously described as breasts, eggs and bull testicles.

The Temple of Artemis was a wonder of the ancient world and much larger than the Parthenon, burned and rebuilt more than once and finally quarried away for other buildings. One column, re-erected from broken drums, stands in a wet field with a stork's nest on top of it. It is free, it takes ten minutes, and it is oddly moving.

The best preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean, big enough that walking gate to gate without stopping takes most of an hour. The set pieces are the marble main street, the two storey facade of the Library of Celsus, re-erected from its own fallen stones in the 1970s, a theatre for around 25,000 people, and the Terrace Houses with their mosaic floors and painted rooms. Paul spent two years preaching here, and the riot the silversmiths raised against him happened in that theatre.

The cafes by the car park are adequate rather than good. Going back into Selçuk to eat properly costs half an hour of driving and is usually worth it.

A small stone chapel in the pines above the ruins, identified in the 19th century from the visions of a German nun who had never been to Turkey and a pilgrimage site ever since, visited by several popes. Whether or not Mary ever lived here, and the older tradition puts her in Jerusalem, it is cool, quiet and shaded, with a wall of tied prayer ribbons below it.

Justinian finished the basilica in 565 AD over what was held to be the tomb of St John the Apostle. Enough columns and marble flooring have been re-erected to read the plan of what was one of the largest churches of its day, and the citadel walls above it went up in the 7th century against Arab raids, staying in use until Tamerlane wrecked the site in 1402.

Regional trains run north from Selçuk to the airport in about an hour, and the suburban line does the same with one change. Buy the ticket before boarding and allow a comfortable margin.