Istanbul Tour Without Hotel – 2 Days: Old City & Bosphorus Cruise

Included today: lunch, transfers and entrance fees

A guided walk through Sultanahmet: the Hippodrome, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar and Topkapi Palace.

08:30 – Your driver picks you up from your centrally located Istanbul hotel and takes you to Sultanahmet, the historic peninsula where the route starts. The pick-up time may vary with hotel location.

09:00 – You meet your guide at the Hippodrome, who outlines the plan for the day. The sites follow a sensible walking order with little backtracking. Lunch is included during the tour.

Route: Hippodrome → Hagia Sophia Mosque → Blue Mosque → Grand Bazaar → Topkapi Palace

• Hippodrome (At Meydani) – the civic and social centre of Byzantine Constantinople. Emperor Septimius Severus built it in 203 AD and Constantine the Great enlarged it into the main arena of the city for sport and ceremony. Three ancient monuments still stand where they were first placed: the Egyptian Obelisk of Thutmose III, the Serpentine Column from Delphi and the Column of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Your guide uses the square to explain the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman layers that make Sultanahmet the most history-packed district in Turkey.
• Hagia Sophia Mosque – after its completion in 537 AD it was the largest cathedral in the world for almost a thousand years, a work of Byzantine engineering that became the model for domed sacred buildings across the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds. The huge central dome, gold mosaics and layered marble show the ambition of the Eastern Roman Empire at its peak, and the Ottoman conversion after 1453 adds five more centuries of meaning. Today it is an active mosque, with set areas open to visitors alongside worshippers all day.
• Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) – finished in 1616 for Sultan Ahmed I, it is the only imperial mosque in Istanbul with six minarets. At the time that number was reserved for the mosque in Mecca, so it caused an instant stir at the Ottoman court. Over 20,000 hand-painted Iznik tiles in blue and turquoise give the mosque its popular name, and light from 260 windows changes the mood inside through the day. Non-Muslim visitors can enter outside the five daily prayer times, and the courtyard and fountain are in constant use.
• Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi) – among the oldest covered markets in the world, dating back to 1455. At its height it held more than 4,000 shops along 61 roofed streets, all forming one continuous trading district. Today it deals mainly in jewellery, textiles, leather and souvenirs, and many merchants come from families who have traded in the same lanes for generations. Walking the main corridors puts you in touch with the Ottoman trading tradition that kept Istanbul at the centre of land and sea trade for centuries.
• Topkapi Palace – from the 1460s until the mid-19th century this was where the Ottoman Empire was run and where the sultan lived with his court and government. Its courtyards follow one another, each more restricted than the last, toward the private quarters. The complex covers 70 hectares at the tip of the historic peninsula and holds the Imperial Treasury, the Sacred Relics collection, the harem apartments and the oldest surviving Ottoman collection of arms, manuscripts and ceramics. From the outer terraces, the views over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn make it obvious why this headland was chosen as the seat of empire.

17:00 – At the end of the route your driver takes you back to your Istanbul hotel. The evening is free.

Included today: cruise and transfers

A narrated sightseeing cruise past the waterfront palaces, the bridges, Rumeli Fortress and the Maiden's Tower.

14:00 – Your driver picks you up at the hotel and takes you to the departure pier on the Bosphorus. The pick-up time may vary with hotel location.

14:30 – You board the sightseeing boat, which leaves from the European shore and heads north up the strait. Your guide describes the landmarks on both shores as you pass. Note that this is a sightseeing cruise, not a dinner cruise.

Route: Dolmabahce Palace → Ciragan Palace → Ortakoy Mosque & Bosphorus Bridge → Rumeli Fortress → Beylerbeyi Palace → Maiden's Tower

• Dolmabahce Palace – in 1856 it took over from Topkapi as the main residence of the sultans, and it made the point with a 600-metre facade along the European shore, the longest palace front on the strait. Its mix of Ottoman Baroque and Neoclassical styles was meant to look modern and to rival the royal palaces of Europe. The palace is best known as the place where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk died in 1938; the clocks inside still stand at 09:05 to mark the moment.
• Ciragan Palace (Ciragan Sarayi) – Sultan Abdulaziz ordered it in 1874 to match Dolmabahce in size, but its Ottoman life was short: fire gutted it in 1910 and it lay in ruins for decades. In the 1990s the surviving marble facade, decorated gatehouses and waterside terrace became part of a luxury hotel, so the exterior still looks much as it did from the water. From the boat you get the best sense of its original proportions, which are hard to judge from the narrow streets behind.
• Ortakoy Mosque and the Bosphorus Bridge – the Ortakoy (Mecidiye) Mosque stands right at the edge of the water below the first Bosphorus Bridge, and the pairing of a 19th-century Ottoman mosque with a 1970s suspension bridge is one of the most copied images of Istanbul. It was built in 1854 by the architect behind the Dolmabahce interiors, and on calm days its ornate Baroque front is mirrored in the water. Overhead, the bridge carries traffic between Europe and Asia, and that meeting of centuries in a single frame makes this the most photographed part of the cruise.
• Rumeli Fortress (Rumeli Hisari) – Sultan Mehmed II had it built in only four months in 1452, a year before Constantinople fell, to command the narrowest point of the Bosphorus and cut the Byzantine supply route from the Black Sea. Opposite stands Anadolu Hisari on the Asian side, and together the two fortresses made a naval blockade of the city possible. Seen from the water at the tightest part of the strait, the plan is easy to read: once both forts were manned, nothing could get through.
• Beylerbeyi Palace – built in 1865 on the Asian bank as a summer residence and a palace for receiving foreign royals; Empress Eugenie of France and the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef both stayed here on state visits. The two-storey white marble building feels more intimate than Dolmabahce, and its sheltered spot gives it a different mood from the exposed European palaces. It is also the only major Bosphorus palace on the Asian side, which is clear when you see it from mid-channel.
• Maiden's Tower (Kiz Kulesi) – a small, lighthouse-like tower on a tiny islet off Uskudar on the Asian shore, with one of the most recognisable outlines in Istanbul from any angle. Over its history it has been a lighthouse, a quarantine station, a customs post and a naval lookout, and it features in at least two popular Turkish legends about imprisoned princesses. Recently restored and reopened to visitors, it looks best from the water, where its distance from both shores gives it a drama that fades once you are on the island.

17:00 – The boat returns to the pier and your driver takes you back to your hotel. The evening is free.