1 destination · 28 things to do

Turkey

Istanbul is the only great city on two continents, and for sixteen centuries it was the capital of two empires, so it does history on a scale that leaves first-timers speechless. Justinian's Hagia Sophia still lifts its vast dome over the old city after nearly fifteen hundred years; the Ottoman sultans ruled from the courtyards, Treasury and Harem of Topkapi Palace; the Blue Mosque answers Hagia Sophia across a garden with six minarets and a sea of Iznik tiles; and beneath the streets the Basilica Cistern hides a forest of 336 columns and two Medusa heads. This guide books the city properly in its current form: Hagia Sophia on the separate foreign-visitor ticket that now takes you up to the mosaic galleries, Topkapi on any day but Tuesday, Dolmabahce on any day but Monday, the Galata Tower at opening or after dark, and a cruise up the Bosphorus between the palaces, fortresses and wooden mansions of Europe and Asia. Then it gives you the free Istanbul that Istanbullus love: the Blue Mosque between prayers, Sinan's Suleymaniye with its terrace over the Golden Horn, haggling in the Grand Bazaar, the scent of the Spice Bazaar, an evening on Istiklal Avenue and the colored houses of Fener and Balat. Finally it matches you to the right hotel, from the Pera Palace, where Agatha Christie wrote, to a Bosphorus palace, a former prison in Sultanahmet and a family-run boutique steps from the Blue Mosque, because in a city this big, where you sleep decides what you see.