City guide
Two continents, two empires' capitals, sixteen million people, and a ferry ride that is still the best thing you can do here for the price of a bus fare.
Turkey7 min readUpdated August 15, 2026
Istanbul is enormous and most visitors see about two square kilometres of it. Sultanahmet holds the monuments and almost nothing else worth your evening. The city people actually live in is across the Golden Horn in Beyoglu and Karakoy, and across the water entirely in Kadikoy.
Build the days around the ferries. Crossing the Bosphorus costs almost nothing, takes twenty minutes, and does more for your sense of the place than any museum.
Turkish food is regional and Istanbul imported all of it. The evening institution is the meyhane: a long table of small cold plates, grilled fish, and raki, taken slowly over three or four hours.
Kadikoy
The chef spent decades collecting recipes from across south-eastern Turkey and cooks them without decoration. Point at the trays, pay by weight, and eat things you will not find again.
Local tip: Take the ferry from Eminonu rather than the metro. The crossing is half the pleasure of going.
Ask the concierge to book thisA kitchen that treats Anatolian home cooking as something worth researching.
Karakoy
Turquoise-tiled, always full, and doing classic Istanbul cooking properly. It runs as a lunch canteen and turns into a meyhane at night.
Ask the concierge to book thisKarakoy
Baklava since 1949, sold by weight at a counter with a ticket system. Order the pistachio, eat it standing, and understand what the supermarket version is imitating.
Kadikoy
Fish, pickles, cheese and coffee across a few blocks on the Asian side, with bars and meyhanes filling in between. This is where the city eats on a Saturday.
Sultanahmet puts you next to the monuments and nothing else. Karakoy, Galata and Cihangir are where to stay if you want dinner within walking distance.
Beyoglu
The old American consulate, restored with the frescoes intact. Rooms are open to hotel guests without membership, which is not obvious from the outside.
Ask the concierge to book thisA 19th-century Genoese palace with a pool on the roof and the Bosphorus behind it.
A 1863 bank building with the vault doors still in place, on a steep street of coffee roasters and galleries. Walkable to the ferries and the Galata tower.
Ask the concierge to book thisKarakoy
Two Ottoman waterfront mansions up the Bosphorus, with a boat into town. Far from the sights, which is the entire proposition.
Ask the concierge to book thisSariyer
The Sultanahmet monuments are within a few minutes of each other, so do them in one morning and give the afternoon to the water.
Sultanahmet
A cathedral for nine hundred years, a mosque for five hundred, a museum for eighty, and a mosque again since 2020. The dome still does not look possible from underneath.
Local tip: Visitors now use an upper-gallery ticket with its own entrance. Dress code applies and prayer times close it to visitors.
Sultanahmet
Four courtyards of Ottoman government on the point where the Bosphorus meets the Golden Horn. Pay the extra for the harem; it is the half most people skip and the better half.
Fatih
Sinan's masterpiece on the third hill, calmer and better proportioned than the Blue Mosque, with a terrace over the whole Golden Horn. Free.
Eminonu
A public ferry up the strait past palaces, fortresses and wooden mansions to a fishing village near the Black Sea. Ninety minutes each way for a few lira.
Two of these are ferry rides. The third is a proper journey and needs an overnight.
Nine car-free islands in the Sea of Marmara, with wooden summer houses and electric carts instead of the old horse carriages. Buyukada is the big one; Heybeliada is quieter.
islands · cycling · full day
The first Ottoman capital, under a mountain, reached by fast ferry across the Marmara. Green mosques, a silk market, and the original iskender kebab.
ottoman · food · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisThe First World War battlefields on the Dardanelles, and the layered ruins of Troy nearby. Too far for a comfortable day trip; go for a night.
history · overnight
Ask the concierge to book thisEverything above, on one map. Colours mark what kind of place it is; tap a dot and its details open beside the map, and you keep your place. Day trips are left off, they sit well outside the city.
Pin positions are approximate: neighbourhood level, not street addresses.
One card covers metro, tram, funicular, bus and every ferry, at a fraction of single-ticket prices. Top it up at any machine.
Shoes off, shoulders and knees covered, heads covered for women. Scarves are lent at the door. Visits pause around the five daily prayers.
A friendly stranger practising English, a relative with a shop, a cup of tea. Harmless if you know what it is, expensive if you do not.
The monuments now use timed tickets and the good meyhanes fill on Friday and Saturday well ahead. Send the Simly concierge your dates and a person will book the tickets, the tables and a private Bosphorus boat if you would rather not share the ferry.
Message the conciergeEverything in this guide assumes a working phone: maps between neighbourhoods that follow no grid, ride-hailing instead of flagging taxis, a menu handwritten in Arabic. A Simly eSIM activates before you land, so you step off the plane already connected.
Get a Simly eSIMIstanbul, Turkey
