Landmarks in Istanbul

Hagia Sophia

537 · Isidore of Miletus

A vast, shallow dome resting on pendentives — an engineering solution that briefly made this the largest enclosed interior space anywhere — rises over a basilica-shaped body ringed by minarets added after it became a mosque.

Built as the third church on this site under the emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537, and designed by Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, it served as the cathedral of Constantinople until 1453, aside from a period under Latin Crusader control between 1204 and 1261. After the Ottoman conquest it became a mosque and gained minarets soon after; later architects carried out further additions and repairs over the centuries that followed. It was secularised into a museum in 1935 and was redesignated a mosque again in 2020.

• Its dome was among the first anywhere to be fully supported on pendentives, and for a time gave it the largest interior space of any building in the world.
• It spent 85 years as a museum, from 1935 to 2020, sandwiched between two periods as a working mosque.
• It is only the third church built on the same spot; the previous two were both destroyed.

Photo: Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Blue Mosque

1616 · Sedefkar Mehmed Ağa

Six slender minarets ring a cascade of one central dome and four semi-domes over a courtyard, while the interior glows in predominantly blue tones from thousands of painted tiles and floral motifs — the source of its popular name.

Constructed between 1609 and 1617 under the rule of Ahmed I, this imperial mosque follows a classical Ottoman plan: a central dome ringed by four semi-domes over the prayer hall, fronted by a large courtyard and flanked by six minarets. Thousands of Iznik tiles and painted floral motifs, mostly in blue, cover the interior. Its wider religious complex includes Ahmed's tomb and a madrasa, and the whole ensemble was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1985 under a joint listing covering several historic areas.

• It was built directly beside the site of the city's former chariot-racing Hippodrome.
• Its 1985 UNESCO listing groups it with other monuments under a joint name rather than its own.

Photo: Moonik (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Galata Tower

1349

A stone tower standing alone above the surrounding rooftops, one of the few surviving pieces of a mostly demolished circuit of walls, and easily picked out from across the water as a symbol of its district.

Built as a watchtower at the highest point of the Walls of Galata, a fortification system in the Beyoğlu district that has since been mostly demolished, the tower is among the few medieval structures the district still has standing. No architect for it is recorded. It now operates as an exhibition space and museum, and has become a symbol of both Beyoğlu and the wider city, its officially registered name today being the Galata Tower Museum.

• Its official registered name today is simply the Galata Tower Museum.
• It is one of the few pieces still standing from a much larger circuit of walls that has otherwise been mostly demolished.

Photo: Maurice Flesier (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Topkapı Palace

1478 · Mehmed II

Rather than a single monument, this is a low, spread-out complex of four consecutive courtyards linked by gates, with many smaller pavilions and a harem quarter rather than one dominant facade.

Construction began in 1459, ordered by Mehmed the Conqueror six years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, and the complex grew over the following centuries, with major rebuilding after the 1509 earthquake and a 1665 fire. Originally called the New Palace, it served as the empire's administrative centre and the sultans' main residence, its four courtyards holding the harem and the Imperial Council chambers. After the seventeenth century sultans increasingly preferred residences along the water, and in 1856 the court moved to the newly built Dolmabahçe Palace, though this palace kept its treasury, library and mint.

• Its name, meaning 'Cannon Gate', was only given to it in the nineteenth century, long after it was built.
• Even after the court moved out in 1856, it kept functioning as the imperial treasury, library and mint.

Photo: Gryffindor (Public domain)

Dolmabahçe Palace

1853 · Garabet Amira Balyan

Ornate Baroque and Neoclassical facades in pale stone run directly along the waterline, a European palace silhouette that stands apart from the domed and minareted skyline further inland.

A nineteenth-century palace on the European shore of the strait, built in a mix of Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical and Ottoman styles credited to the architects Garabet and Nigoğayos Balyan. It became the Ottoman Empire's main administrative centre from 1853, a role it held, with a break, until 1887 and then again from 1909 to 1922. It replaced an earlier fifteenth-century palace of courtyards as the seat of government, marking a deliberate shift toward imported European architectural taste in the empire's later decades.

• It served as the seat of government twice, in two separate stretches decades apart, rather than continuously.

Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Maiden's Tower

1110

The silhouette stands entirely alone: a compact tower rising from a small islet fully surrounded by water and connected to neither shore, functioning today as both a lighthouse and a restaurant reached by boat.

Standing on an islet 200 metres from the Üsküdar shore at the mouth of the strait, the current tower dates in essence to 1110, though the structure has been rebuilt and altered many times since. Known since the Byzantine period by a second name, Leander's Tower, alongside its Turkish one, it has served various functions over the centuries, including as a lighthouse, and appeared on the reverse of the Turkish ten-lira banknote between 1966 and 1981.

• It has carried two names for centuries: its Turkish name and, since Byzantine times, Leander's Tower.
• It appeared on the back of the Turkish ten-lira banknote from 1966 to 1981.

Photo: Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Süleymaniye Mosque

1557 · Mimar Sinan

Its scale and hilltop position make it visible from a distance as one of the largest mosque domes in the city; behind the building stands an enclosed cemetery holding two separate octagonal mausoleums.

Commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent and designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan, the mosque's foundation is inscribed with the date 1550 and its inauguration with 1557, though work on the wider complex likely continued a few years longer. Considered one of Sinan's finest works, it forms part of a larger charitable foundation that once included madrasas, a public kitchen and a hospital. An enclosed cemetery behind the mosque holds the separate octagonal mausoleums of Suleiman and his wife, Hurrem Sultan, and the site is protected as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• Its foundation is inscribed with one date, 1550, and its inauguration with another, 1557, seven years apart.
• It is described as the largest Ottoman-era mosque in the city.

Photo: İhsan Deniz Kılıçoğlu (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Rumeli Fortress

1452

Overlooking a narrow point of the strait from a run of hills, the fortress stands opposite a smaller sister fortress on the far bank, the two once working together to close the water between them.

Commissioned by Mehmed II and built within the single year spanning 1451 and 1452, the fortress was raised on the European bank of the strait ahead of the final Ottoman siege of Constantinople, working with its older sister fortress on the opposite shore to block naval relief from reaching the city's defenders. Also called Boğazkesen, or 'strait-cutter', for that purpose, it later served as a customs post and occasional prison, including for envoys of states at war with the empire, before suffering major damage in an early sixteenth-century earthquake.

• Its Turkish name, Boğazkesen, or 'strait-cutter', describes exactly the job it was built to do.
• It later served as a prison, including for envoys of states at war with the empire.

Photo: mike (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Aqueduct of Valens

373

A two-tiered run of stone arches, roughly 921 metres long, striding across a valley on tall piers, with a modern boulevard now passing beneath its lower arches.

Built as part of a Roman aqueduct system supplying Constantinople with fresh water, construction began under Emperor Constantius II and was completed in 373 under Valens, whose name it bears. The system eventually stretched over 250 kilometres through the Thracian hill country, one of the longest in antiquity, and Byzantines and Ottomans went on extending and maintaining it for centuries after. The surviving bridge, in the Fatih district, is 921 metres long, roughly 50 metres short of its original length, and now carries a boulevard beneath its arches.

• A 4th-century writer described it as an 'underground and aerial river.'
• Tradition holds its stones came from the walls of Chalcedon, torn down in 366 as punishment for a revolt.
• It was cut by Avar forces during the siege of Constantinople in 626.

Photo: Javier Losa (CC BY 2.0)

Basilica Cistern

6th century

Rows of marble columns, some ringed at their base with carved Medusa-head blocks, rise from a wide, dimly lit underground hall partly filled with water, now crossed by elevated walkways.

Built in the sixth century under Byzantine emperor Justinian I, on a site earlier occupied by a public square known as the Stoa Basilica, the cistern supplied water carried from the Belgrade Forest via the Valens Aqueduct to points on the historic peninsula. Local residents kept drawing water from it long after it was largely forgotten elsewhere, until a French traveller recorded it in 1565. Opened to the public as a museum in 1987, it closed again in 2017 for restoration and earthquake-proofing, reopening in 2022.

• Historical accounts claim 7,000 enslaved people worked on its construction.
• Two column bases in its northwest corner are carved with the face of Medusa, for reasons that remain unexplained.
• It appeared as a filming location in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love.

Photo: Carole Raddato (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Bosphorus Bridge

1973 · Gilbert Roberts

Two tall steel towers carry gravity-anchored cables supporting an aerodynamic eight-lane deck; at night a computerised LED system washes the towers and cables in changing colours.

Designed by the British civil engineers Gilbert Roberts, William Brown and Michael Parsons of Freeman Fox & Partners, construction began in 1970 and finished on 30 October 1973, connecting Ortaköy on the European side with Beylerbeyi on the Asian side. At completion it had the fourth-longest suspension bridge span in the world and the longest outside the United States. It remains a toll bridge, and after the 2016 coup attempt it was officially renamed for those killed resisting it, though it is still commonly known by its original name.

• Fully loaded, the deck sags about 90 centimetres in the middle of its span.
• A computerised LED lighting system installed in 2007 changes the bridge's colours and patterns at night.
• The one-billionth vehicle crossed it on 29 December 1997.

Photo: mehmet bilgin (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Galata Bridge

1992–1994

A low, double-leaf drawbridge that can be raised at its centre to let ships pass, with shops, cafés and restaurants lining its lower deck along the waterline.

The current bridge, opened in December 1994, is the fifth built on this site since 1845, spanning a horn-shaped inlet between the Eminönü and Karaköy districts. It takes its name from Galata, the historic name for Karaköy on the opposite shore. Predecessors included nineteenth-century pontoon bridges and a floating bridge built in 1912 that caught fire in 1992 before being towed away. The bridge carries road traffic, trams and pedestrians, and its lower level has long housed shops and restaurants.

• Leonardo da Vinci designed a single-span bridge for this site in 1502–03 that was never built after the sultan rejected it.
• Michelangelo was also invited to design a bridge here but turned down the commission.
• The fourth bridge, built in 1912, became an important venue for early Turkish rock music before it burned in a 1992 fire.

Photo: Vikiçizer (CC BY-SA 4.0)

New Mosque

1597–1665 · Davut Ağa

A cascading pyramid of 66 domes and semi-domes topped by two minarets, fronted by a large domed courtyard, with a mihrab and minbar inside covered in blue, green and white tiles.

Commissioned by Safiye Sultan, mother of Sultan Mehmed III, construction began in 1597 under the architect Davut Ağa; after his death in 1599 Dalgıç Ahmed Çavuş took over, but the project stalled and was abandoned in 1603. The unfinished shell was damaged in the Great Fire of 1660, after which imperial architect Mustafa Ağa proposed that Turhan Sultan, mother of Mehmed IV, complete it as an act of piety. Work resumed that year, and the mosque was finished in 1663 and inaugurated in 1665.

• Its construction stalled for over half a century, between 1603 and 1660, before being completed.
• The site was chosen partly to extend Islamic commercial influence into a quarter then home to a predominantly Jewish merchant population.
• Its dome plan borrows from the earlier Şehzade Mosque, also designed by the architect Mimar Sinan.

Photo: Mark Ahsmann (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Grand Bazaar

One of the world's largest and oldest covered markets, spanning 61 streets and more than 4,000 shops over 30,700 square meters. In 2014 it ranked as the world's most-visited tourist attraction, drawing 91,250,000 visitors that year.

Hippodrome of Constantinople

The former circus that served as the sporting and social center of Constantinople, today known as Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul. Also called Atmeydanı, or 'Horse Square,' in Turkish, it once hosted the horse and chariot racing popular across the Greek, Roman and Byzantine worlds.

Little Hagia Sophia

A former Greek Orthodox church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus, built under Justinian with a disputed start date between 527 and 536. Converted into a mosque under Ottoman rule, it was built at the same time as Hagia Sophia, not as its model.

Fatih Mosque

An Ottoman mosque built between 1463 and 1470, named for Mehmed the Conqueror, who took Constantinople in 1453. Badly damaged in the 1766 earthquake, it was rebuilt to a new design in 1771 and reopened after restoration in 2021.

Bayezid II Mosque

An early 16th-century Ottoman imperial mosque standing in Beyazıt Square. It sits near the ruins of the ancient Forum of Theodosius from Constantinople.

Nuruosmaniye Mosque

An 18th-century Ottoman mosque in the Çemberlitaş neighborhood, designed by the Greek architect Simeon Kalfa as the first Ottoman building in the new baroque style. Its dome is among the largest in Istanbul, and it was added to Turkey's UNESCO tentative list in 2016.

Rüstem Pasha Mosque

An Ottoman mosque near the Spice Bazaar, designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan and completed around 1563 for Rüstem Pasha, Grand Vizier under Suleiman I. It is noted for the many different İznik tile designs covering almost every vertical surface.

Yıldız Palace

A vast complex of former imperial Ottoman pavilions and villas in Beşiktaş, built during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It served as a residence for the sultan and his court in the late 19th century.

İstiklal Avenue

A 1.4-kilometer pedestrian street running from Tünel Square to Taksim Square, historically known as the Grand Avenue of Pera. It took its current name, meaning Independence, after the declaration of the Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923.

St. George's Cathedral

The principal Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Istanbul, seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople since about 1600. Its leader is regarded as first among equals in the Eastern Orthodox Church and is often seen as the spiritual head of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Bulgarian St. Stephen Church

A Bulgarian Orthodox church in Balat, popularly known as the Bulgarian Iron Church for being built from prefabricated cast-iron elements in the Neo-Byzantine style. It serves the city's Bulgarian Christian minority.

Pammakaristos Church

One of Istanbul's most famous Byzantine churches, the last pre-Ottoman building to house the Ecumenical Patriarchate before its 1591 conversion into the Fethiye Mosque. Its side chapel, now a museum, holds the city's largest quantity of Byzantine mosaics after Hagia Sophia and the Chora.

Zeyrek Mosque

A mosque formed from two former Byzantine churches and a chapel joined together, overlooking the Golden Horn in the Zeyrek district. Known as the Monastery of the Pantokrator, it is the largest Byzantine religious building still standing in Istanbul after Hagia Sophia.

Atatürk Cultural Center

A concert hall and cultural center on Taksim Square, opened in 1969, closed for renovation in 2008, demolished in 2018 and rebuilt. It reopened on 29 October 2021, designed by Murat Tabanlıoğlu, son of the original architect, with a facade that opens onto the square.

Serpent Column

An ancient bronze column at the Hippodrome, part of a sacrificial tripod moved from Delphi to Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 324. It commemorated the Greek victory over Persia at Plataea in 479 BC, and its serpent heads survived until the late 17th century.

Obelisk of Theodosius

An ancient Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Thutmose III, first erected during Egypt's 18th dynasty around 1479–1425 BC. It was re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in the 4th century AD.

Boukoleon Palace

One of the Byzantine imperial palaces of Constantinople, standing on the shore of the Sea of Marmara. It lies south of the Hippodrome and east of the Little Hagia Sophia.

Büyük Valide Han

The largest historic caravanserai in Istanbul, founded in 1651 by Kösem Valide Sultan. She was the wife of Sultan Ahmed I and mother of Sultans Murat IV and Ibrahim.

German Fountain

A gazebo-style fountain at the northern end of the old Hippodrome, built in Germany and reassembled on site in 1900 to mark Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1898 visit. Its neo-Byzantine octagonal dome rests on eight marble columns, with an interior covered in gold mosaics.

Çemberlitaş Hamam

A historic hammam beside Divan Yolu, a Byzantine-era processional road that once led to Rome. Built in 1584 and often attributed to the architect Mimar Sinan, it still operates near the Çemberlitaş tram stop.