Istanbul City Trip with Guided Tours: 5-Day Plan for German Speakers

Five days is the right length for an Istanbul city trip with guided tours: book a guide for two of them, the Old City and the Bosphorus, and explore the rest on your own, which with us costs from $199 per group per guided day. Our private Istanbul guide for 1, 2 or 3 days is priced that way, for 8 hours a day. A German-speaking guide is not a fixed option on any of our tours; we arrange one on request, subject to availability, and confirm the price before you book. Below is a day-by-day plan that works around Istanbul's closing days, the cost of each guided option, and the entry rules for travellers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, which are not the same for all three.

The five-day plan at a glance

Three closing days shape the order: Topkapı Palace is closed on Tuesdays, Dolmabahçe Palace on Mondays, and the Grand Bazaar on Sundays. If your day 2 falls on a Tuesday, swap days 2 and 3. If you arrive on a Sunday, keep the Grand Bazaar for day 2 or day 5.

Days 1 and 2: arrival and the Old City with a guide

Day 1. Most flights from German-speaking countries land in the early afternoon or evening, so keep the first day light. Check in, then walk across Sultanahmet Square to the Hippodrome, where the octagonal German Fountain stands, a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II after his visit in 1898. Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are lit up at night, and you get a sense of the distances before the guided day. Our private airport transfer in a Mercedes Vito costs from $60 per group from either airport.

Day 2 is the day a guide matters most. The Old City packs Byzantine and Ottoman history into a few hundred metres, and the explanations on site are mainly in Turkish and English. A good order:

1. Hagia Sophia at opening time. Foreign visitors pay €25 for the visitor route to the upper gallery with the mosaics; the ground floor is reserved for prayer.
2. The Blue Mosque, free, before the midday prayer.
3. The Basilica Cistern during the prayer break.
4. Lunch near Sultanahmet.
5. Topkapı Palace in the afternoon. The combined ticket with the Harem and Hagia Irene costs 2,750 TL for foreign visitors.

If you prefer shared tours, the Old City small-group full day with tickets and lunch costs from $199 per person and runs in English.

Day 3: Bosphorus, Dolmabahçe and Galata

Start on the water. The Bosphorus lunch cruise with hotel pick-up and drop-off, from $75 per person, takes about three hours and passes the palaces, the Ortaköy Mosque, the Rumeli Fortress and the bridges between Europe and Asia.

In the afternoon, visit Dolmabahçe Palace, the nineteenth-century palace on the European shore, where the interior is shown in timed groups. Foreign visitors pay 2,000 TL for the Selamlık, the Harem and the Painting Museum, and the palace is closed on Mondays. Our Dolmabahçe Palace private tour with guide and ticket starts from $150 per person if you want both the palace and the shore explained.

End the day in Galata. From Karaköy, walk uphill past St. Georg, the Austrian school and church that has been part of the neighbourhood since the nineteenth century, to the Galata Tower, and continue along İstiklal Avenue for dinner. More ideas are on our page about things to do in Galata and Karaköy.

Day 4: Golden Horn quarters or a day trip

Day 4 is the flexible one. Two good options:

Option A: Fener, Balat, Chora and Eyüp. Along the Golden Horn lie the oldest residential quarters of the city: the colourful houses of Balat and Fener, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the iron Bulgarian church of St Stephen and, a short ride inland, the Chora mosaics, reopened in 2024 with a visitor area. Finish at Eyüp Sultan Mosque and take the cable car up to the café on Pierre Loti Hill for the view over the Golden Horn. This is a good day to explore on your own with a map, or with our Yedikule Fortress, Galata and Balat half-day tour, from $45 per person.

Option B: the Princes' Islands. A ferry takes you into the Sea of Marmara to Büyükada, where private cars are not allowed and people get around on foot, by bicycle or by electric bus. Our Princes' Islands full-day tour with Büyükada and Heybeliada starts from $34 per person. For a longer excursion, the Bursa day tour with the Uludağ cable car, from $52 per person, takes you to the first Ottoman capital.

Day 5: the Asian side and departure

On your last morning, take a public ferry from Eminönü or Karaköy across to Kadıköy. The crossing is part of the experience, the market streets around Kadıköy are full of fish stalls, delicatessens and coffee shops, and a walk to the Moda seafront shows a residential side of Istanbul that many visitors miss. Our guide to things to do in Kadıköy has the details.

If your flight leaves late, return via the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar for last purchases. Leave at least two hours for the transfer and security at Istanbul Airport; for Sabiha Gökçen, a hotel on the Asian side makes the departure easier. Our Istanbul 5-day itinerary suggests alternatives for each day.

What the guided days cost

Guided options for the plan above, from our current price list:

Entry fees come on top unless the tour states otherwise. For a couple, two private guided days cost from $398 in guide fees plus entry tickets, compared with $199 per person per day for the small-group Old City day with tickets and lunch. Our Istanbul tour prices page compares more formats, and our sister site Get Istanbul Tours has further Istanbul-only options.

German-speaking guides: what to expect

Licensed guides who work in German are easier to find in Istanbul than for many other languages, thanks to long ties between Turkey and the German-speaking countries, including German and Austrian schools in the city. Even so, none of our tours is sold with a German-speaking guide at a fixed price. How it works:

• Send us your dates, group size and the days you want guided.
• We check which licensed German-speaking guides are free and confirm the guide and the price in writing.
• If no German-speaking guide is free, we tell you before you pay and offer an English-speaking guide.

Dates around Easter, Pfingsten and the autumn holidays fill first. Our page on the German-speaking guide in Istanbul explains how we match guides, and for a round trip of Turkey there is the German-language Türkei Rundreise in 14 Tagen.

Entry rules for Germany, Austria and Switzerland

All three nationalities visit Turkey without a visa for up to 90 days, but the documents differ. Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists:

• Germany: passport or Personalausweis. Turkey also accepts German passports and ID cards that expired within the last year. Airlines can be stricter, so a valid document is safer. Visa-free for up to 90 days.
• Switzerland: passport or identity card. Swiss passports that expired within the last five years are also accepted. Visa-free for up to 90 days.
• Austria: passport only. Austria is not on Turkey's list of countries whose citizens may enter with an identity card, so an Austrian Personalausweis is not enough. Visa-free for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.
• Liechtenstein: identity card accepted, like Switzerland.

Passports must be valid for at least 60 days beyond the permitted stay, so 150 days from entry for a 90-day trip; the Ministry recommends six months. Turkish Airlines flies to Istanbul from Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich and Geneva, as well as from the main German airports. Flights from Germany, the airports and a shorter three-day version are covered in our Istanbul city break from Germany guide.

Tours that cover this

• Private Istanbul Tour with a Licensed Guide: 1, 2 or 3 Days, from $199 per group. The two guided days in the plan; ask for a German-speaking guide, arranged subject to availability.
• Istanbul Tour Package: 5 Days with Hotel, Guides and Bosphorus Cruise, from $1,285 per person. The whole trip arranged.
• Bosphorus Lunch Cruise with Hotel Pick-up and Drop-off, from $75 per person. Day 3 morning.
• Princes' Islands Full-Day Tour: Büyükada and Heybeliada, from $34 per person. Day 4, option B.

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