Category
Architecture
39 places
- Hagia SophiaJustinian's 6th-century basilica, later an Ottoman mosque and museum — for a thousand years the largest cathedral in the world.UNESCOAncient Site
- Topkapı PalaceSeat of Ottoman sultans for four centuries, a city of courtyards above the meeting of two seas.UNESCOPalace
- Blue MosqueSultan Ahmed I's six-minaret mosque, named for the İznik tiles that line its interior.UNESCOMosque
- Palace of WestminsterThe home of Parliament, rebuilt after the 1834 fire; its clock tower holds the bell known as Big Ben.UNESCOLandmark
- EphesusThe Library of Celsus, a 25,000-seat theater and marble streets — one of the best-preserved classical cities in the Mediterranean.UNESCOAncient Site
- Tower BridgeThe bascule bridge beside the Tower, with a high walkway between its towers and the Victorian engine rooms below.Landmark
- St Paul's CathedralChristopher Wren's domed cathedral, built after the Great Fire and climbable to galleries under and above the dome.Church
- AnıtkabirAtatürk's mausoleum on a hill above the capital, approached along a colonnaded avenue of stone lions.Landmark
- Grand Central TerminalA 1913 terminal whose main concourse carries a painted night sky on its ceiling, open to anyone walking through.Architecture
- Basilica CisternA subterranean forest of 336 columns built to water the Great Palace — two of them resting on Medusa heads.UNESCOAncient Site
- Süleymaniye MosqueSinan's imperial mosque on the third hill — the architect considered it his journeyman work, not his masterpiece.UNESCOMosque
- Galata TowerA Genoese watchtower over the Golden Horn, and the best-known silhouette on the northern shore.Landmark
- Dolmabahçe PalaceThe Ottoman answer to Versailles, where the empire spent its last treasury and Atatürk died in 1938.Palace
- AspendosThe best-preserved Roman theater in Anatolia: 15,000 seats, intact stage building, still used for opera.Ancient Site
- The ShardThe tallest building in the city, with a viewing floor near the top looking down on the Thames and its bridges.Viewpoint
- Derinkuyu Underground CityEighteen stories down: stables, chapels, wine presses and ventilation shafts for twenty thousand people.UNESCOAncient Site
- KaleiçiThe walled old town: Ottoman houses, a Roman harbor and a fluted minaret, all within one circuit.Landmark
- Walls of ConstantinopleSix kilometers of triple land walls that held for a thousand years, until gunpowder.UNESCOAncient Site
- Rumeli FortressBuilt in four months to cut the Bosphorus before the siege of Constantinople.Castle
- Ortaköy MosqueA small Baroque mosque at the water's edge, framed by the first Bosphorus bridge behind it.Mosque
- Kaymaklı Underground CityWider and lower than Derinkuyu, with rooms still connected to houses in the village above.UNESCOAncient Site
- Hadrian's GateA triple marble arch raised for the emperor's visit, its paving still rutted by chariot wheels.Ancient Site
- Galata BridgeAnglers above, fish restaurants below, and the two halves of the old city on either end.Landmark
- Istanbul ModernTürkiye's first modern art museum, since 2023 in a Renzo Piano building on the Karaköy waterfront.Art Museum
- Sir John Soane's MuseumThe architect's own house kept as he left it, crowded with casts, paintings and an Egyptian sarcophagus.Museum
- Valens AqueductA double tier of Roman arches striding across the modern boulevard that runs beneath it.Ancient Site
- Rüstem Pasha MosqueRaised above a row of shops and lined wall-to-wall with the best İznik tile in the city.Mosque
- New MosqueSixty-six years between foundation and completion, anchoring the Eminönü waterfront.Mosque
- Konak Clock TowerA gift for Abdülhamid II's silver jubilee, and the emblem of the city ever since.Landmark
- Little Hagia SophiaSaints Sergius and Bacchus — the dome experiment that preceded Hagia Sophia by a few years.Church
- Şehzade MosqueSinan's memorial to the prince Mehmed — the work he called his apprentice piece.Mosque
- Kocatepe MosqueA classical Ottoman plan built in the 1980s, and the largest mosque in the capital.Mosque
- Yedikule FortressSeven towers grafted onto the Golden Gate, used in turn as treasury, prison and place of execution.Castle
- Yivli Minare MosqueA fluted brick minaret from the Seljuk period, rising over the old town.Mosque
- Bulgarian St. Stephen ChurchCast in iron in Vienna, shipped down the Danube and bolted together on the Golden Horn.Church
- Anadolu FortressThe older, smaller fortress on the Asian bank, built sixty years before the one facing it.Castle
- Church of St. Anthony of PaduaThe largest Catholic church in the city, set back from İstiklal behind a brick courtyard.Church
- AsansörA public elevator built by a Jewish merchant to spare the neighborhood 155 steps.Landmark
- SALT GalataResearch library and exhibition space inside the former Ottoman Bank headquarters.Gallery