Start Your tour at the Hippodrome, which is a great place to start learning about Istanbul. The Byzantine Emperors loved nothing more than an afternoon at the chariot races, and this rectangular arena was their venue of choice. In its heyday, it was decorated by obelisks and statues, some of which remain in place today. Recently re-landscaped, it is one of the city’s most popular meeting places and promenades.

A visit to the Topkapi Palace enables you to visualize how life was lived in an Ottoman Palace, with its fabulous Treasury, Porcelain Pavillion, and the recently restored Harem quarters.The Topkapi Palace Museum ; Sultan Mehmet II. called Fatih the Conqueror, after conquering Istanbul in 1453, built his first royal palace in the Forum of Theodosius, on what are now the grounds of Istanbul University, in the district of Beyazit.Later, impressed by the situation of the Byzantine Acropolis at today’s Saray Point, dominating the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara, Fatih gave orders for the construction (1475 – 1478) of what we know as the Topkapi Palace.

The largest and oldest covered markets in the world Grand Bazaar (Kapali Çarşı), 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops which attract between 350,000 and 600,000 visitors daily‘ should be any dedicated shopper’s first port of call in Istanbul. Crammed in among chaotic covered streets and alleys, its thousands of stalls hold all manner of items, such as carpets and kilims, leather, suede and denim clothes and accessories, ceramic tiles, bowls and vases, hand-beaten copper and brass lamps, coffee-grinders and samovars, gold and silver jewellery (beware imitations) and much more.

” Church of the Holy Wisdom “, known as Hagia Sophia (Άγια Σοφία) in Greek, Sancta Sophia in Latin, and Aya Sofya in Turkish, is a former Byzantine church and former Ottoman mosque in Istanbul.