One of the most beautiful surviving Byzantine churches, with interiors laid out in fine mosaics and frescoes, has been converted into the impressive Kariye Museum.
Istanbul’s famous old Ottoman summer palace offers a grand view of the Bosphorus Strait and the Old City, as seen from the Asian side of this multi-continental city.
Turkey’s largest city is both European and Asian and has been part of many empires. As a result, Istanbul is modern and traditional, familiar and exotic.
Enter the maze of shop-lined streets in one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world to browse hundreds of thousands of hand-crafted objects.