Category
Historical
77 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
- Tower of LondonA Norman fortress on the Thames that has been a royal palace, a prison and the strongroom of the Crown Jewels.UNESCOCastle
- Topkapı PalaceSeat of Ottoman sultans for four centuries, a city of courtyards above the meeting of two seas.UNESCOPalace
- EphesusThe Library of Celsus, a 25,000-seat theater and marble streets — one of the best-preserved classical cities in the Mediterranean.UNESCOAncient Site
- Westminster AbbeyThe church where English and British monarchs are crowned and many are buried, rebuilt in Gothic form from the 1240s.UNESCOChurch
- Buckingham PalaceThe monarch's official London residence, with the changing of the guard outside and state rooms open in summer.Palace
- Göreme Open Air MuseumA monastic valley of rock-cut churches, their Byzantine frescoes preserved by the dark and the dry air.UNESCOOpen Air Museum
- Grand BazaarSixty covered streets and four thousand shops, continuously trading since the reign of Mehmed II.Market
- Basilica CisternA subterranean forest of 336 columns built to water the Great Palace — two of them resting on Medusa heads.UNESCOAncient Site
- AnıtkabirAtatürk's mausoleum on a hill above the capital, approached along a colonnaded avenue of stone lions.Landmark
- 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
- Derinkuyu Underground CityEighteen stories down: stables, chapels, wine presses and ventilation shafts for twenty thousand people.UNESCOAncient Site
- Museum of Anatolian CivilizationsHittite, Urartian and Phrygian collections in a restored bedesten below the castle — Anatolia in one building.History Museum
- Spice BazaarAn L-shaped hall of spice, dried fruit and lokum, built to fund the New Mosque next door.Market
- Chora ChurchByzantium's finest surviving mosaics and frescoes, in a modest church far from the tourist spine.UNESCOChurch
- Hampton Court PalaceHenry VIII's riverside palace upstream from the city, half Tudor and half baroque, with a maze in the gardens.Palace
- Royal ObservatoryThe observatory on the hill above Greenwich where the prime meridian is drawn and time was kept for shipping.UNESCOScience Museum
- KaleiçiThe walled old town: Ottoman houses, a Roman harbor and a fluted minaret, all within one circuit.Landmark
- Maiden's TowerA tower on its own islet mid-Bosphorus, rebuilt many times and attached to more legends than dates.Landmark
- Hippodrome of ConstantinopleThe chariot-racing spine of the Byzantine city, now a square holding an Egyptian obelisk and a bronze serpent column.UNESCOAncient Site
- Istanbul Archaeology MuseumsThree buildings holding the Alexander Sarcophagus, the Treaty of Kadesh, and the Tiled Kiosk of 1472.History Museum
- Shakespeare's GlobeA timber and thatch reconstruction of the open-air playhouse Shakespeare wrote for, close to the original site.Theatre
- Walls of ConstantinopleSix kilometers of triple land walls that held for a thousand years, until gunpowder.UNESCOAncient Site
- Uçhisar CastleA rock outcrop hollowed into a fortress, the highest point in Cappadocia and visible from every valley.Castle
- Rumeli FortressBuilt in four months to cut the Bosphorus before the siege of Constantinople.Castle
- Kensington PalaceA working royal residence in Kensington Gardens, with state apartments and court dress on show.Palace
- Eyüp Sultan MosqueBuilt over the tomb of the Prophet's standard-bearer — the most venerated Islamic site in the city.Mosque
- SideTemples of Apollo and Athena standing on a promontory at the end of the town's main street.Ancient Site
- Temple of ArtemisOne of the Seven Wonders, now a single reassembled column in a field of foundations.UNESCOAncient Site
- African Burial Ground National MonumentA colonial burial ground for free and enslaved Africans, found under Lower Manhattan during construction and made a national monument in 2006.Historical
- Federal HallThe site where Washington took the first presidential oath; the building standing there today is an 1842 customs house.Historical
- Antalya MuseumThe Hall of Gods, filled with sculpture lifted from Perge — one of Türkiye's strongest archaeological collections.History Museum
- BüyükadaThe largest Princes' Island: no private cars, wooden mansions, and a monastery on the southern hill.Landmark
- 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
- Ankara CastleByzantine walls built from salvaged Roman stone, with the old town still living inside them.Castle
- PergeA colonnaded street with a water channel running down its center, between Hellenistic towers.Ancient Site
- BalatSteep lanes of painted timber houses, the old Jewish and Greek quarter of the Golden Horn.Landmark
- Museum of Turkish and Islamic ArtsCarpets, calligraphy and Seljuk woodwork in İbrahim Pasha's 16th-century palace on the Hippodrome.Art Museum
- Kemeraltı BazaarAn Ottoman market that follows the curve of a silted-up ancient harbor.Market
- TermessosA Pisidian city a thousand meters up, never taken by Alexander, now inside a national park.Ancient Site
- Beylerbeyi PalaceThe sultans' summer residence on the Asian shore, where Empress Eugénie was received in 1869.Palace
- PaşabağTwin- and triple-capped cones, one of them hollowed into a hermitage for Saint Simeon.Nature
- House of the Virgin MaryA small stone chapel on Bülbül Mountain, a pilgrimage site for Christians and Muslims alike.Religious
- Zelve Open Air MuseumThree valleys of cave dwellings inhabited until 1952, when the rock became too unstable.UNESCOOpen Air Museum
- Fatih MosqueThe conqueror's own mosque complex, raised on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles.Mosque
- Valens AqueductA double tier of Roman arches striding across the modern boulevard that runs beneath it.Ancient Site
- ŞirinceA hillside village of Greek stone houses, known for fruit wine and a mathematics institute.Landmark
- Temple of Augustus and RomeCarries the fullest surviving text of the Res Gestae, the emperor's own account of his reign.Ancient Site
- OlymposRuins tangled in laurel along a stream, with the eternal flames of Chimaera on the ridge above.Ancient Site
- ÇeşmeA Genoese castle above a harbor town, with thermal springs and clear water on either side.Beach
- Great Palace Mosaic MuseumA surviving peristyle floor from the Byzantine imperial palace, hunting scenes rendered in tesserae.UNESCOHistory Museum
- PhaselisThree harbors joined by a paved avenue, with pines running down to the water.Ancient Site
- Konak Clock TowerA gift for Abdülhamid II's silver jubilee, and the emblem of the city ever since.Landmark
- Gülhane ParkThe outer garden of Topkapı, opened to the public and famous for its April tulips.Park
- Hacı Bayram MosqueThe city's principal pilgrimage mosque, built against the wall of the Roman temple.Mosque
- Ecumenical Patriarchate of ConstantinopleThe senior see of the Orthodox world, behind a gate welded shut since 1821.Church
- Little Hagia SophiaSaints Sergius and Bacchus — the dome experiment that preceded Hagia Sophia by a few years.Church
- Agora of SmyrnaThe Roman marketplace rebuilt by Marcus Aurelius after the earthquake of 178, with vaulted basement galleries intact.Ancient Site
- ÇavuşinAn abandoned cliff village below the Church of St. John the Baptist, one of the oldest in the region.Ancient Site
- 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
- HeybeliadaPine slopes and the shuttered Halki seminary, quieter than its larger neighbor.Landmark
- Yıldız ParkThe wooded grounds of Abdülhamid II's palace, climbing steeply from the Bosphorus road.Park
- KuzguncukOne street of pastel houses where a mosque, a church and a synagogue stand within sight of each other.Landmark
- KadifekaleA fortress founded under Alexander's successors, looking down the whole length of the gulf.Castle
- Zeyrek MosqueThe Pantokrator monastery, second only to Hagia Sophia among the city's surviving Byzantine churches.UNESCOChurch
- Çemberlitaş HamamA working Sinan bathhouse, in continuous use since Nurbanu Sultan endowed it.Landmark
- Anadolu FortressThe older, smaller fortress on the Asian bank, built sixty years before the one facing it.Castle
- AsansörA public elevator built by a Jewish merchant to spare the neighborhood 155 steps.Landmark
- Panorama 1453 History MuseumA 360-degree painted panorama of the final assault, standing where the walls were breached.History Museum
- Roman Baths of AnkaraThe hypocaust floor of a 3rd-century bath complex, its brick pillars still standing in rows.Ruins
- Yoros CastleA ruined Byzantine fort where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea.Castle
- Istanbul Naval MuseumImperial caiques — gilded royal barges up to forty meters long — in a purpose-built hall.History Museum
- Tekfur PalaceThe only substantially intact Byzantine palace left in the city, wedged into the land walls.Palace