Free walking tours in Istanbul

1. Morning

   From the Blue Mosque to Galata Tower

   Essentials · 3.9 km · 2 h 30 min

   1. The Blue MosqueSix minarets, more than twenty thousand tiles and the ambition of a twenty-year-old sultan.
   2. The Grand BazaarMore than sixty covered streets and thousands of shops: the market Mehmed II founded after the conquest is still haggling.
   3. The Süleymaniye MosqueSinan's masterpiece crowns Istanbul's third hill and holds the tombs of Suleiman, Hürrem and the architect himself.
   4. The Spice BazaarA market paid for with Egypt's taxes, still smelling of cumin, coffee and pistachio three and a half centuries on.
   5. The Galata BridgeAnglers above, restaurants below, and a Leonardo da Vinci design that was never built.
   6. Galata TowerA Genoese tower from 1348, an Ottoman fire lookout and the setting for a legendary flight over the Bosphorus.

2. Afternoon

   From Byzantium to the Sublime Porte: fifteen centuries of power

   History · 2 km · 1 h 45 min

   1. The Hippodrome and the Obelisk of TheodosiusWhere families now stroll and simit sellers call out, a hundred thousand spectators once roared for their charioteers, and one day a massacre took place.
   2. The Milion, the empire's mile zeroAn almost invisible stump of stone marks the point from which every distance in the Byzantine Empire was measured.
   3. Hagia Sophia, from basilica to mosqueFifteen centuries under one dome: imperial church, sultan's mosque, museum and mosque once more.
   4. The Imperial Gate and the Fountain of Ahmed IIIThe entrance to Topkapı Palace, built by the Conqueror, and the most elegant fountain of Istanbul's Tulip Era.
   5. The Sublime PorteA gate with a sweeping canopy that gave its name to an entire government and witnessed the coup of 1913.
   6. Sirkeci StationThe end of the line for the Orient Express, an 1890 building that imagined the East through European eyes.

3. Early evening

   Talismans, Medusas and weeping columns

   Mysteries & legends · 1.7 km · 1 h 35 min

   1. The Serpent ColumnThree intertwined bronze serpents that celebrated a Greek victory and ended up as a charm against snakebites.
   2. The Binbirdirek CisternThe "cistern of a thousand and one columns" spent centuries forgotten beneath a neighbourhood that had no idea what lay underfoot.
   3. The Burnt Column (Çemberlitaş)A porphyry pillar clasped by iron hoops, beneath which, tradition says, Constantine hid the holiest relics of the ancient world.
   4. The Basilica Cistern and its MedusasA sunken palace of 336 columns, two Medusa heads set the wrong way round and a column that, so they say, weeps.
   5. Hagia Sophia and the sweating columnA damp column credited with cures, and a priest who, legend says, walked into the wall in 1453 and will one day return.

Where to eat. Try Sultanahmet köfte at Tarihi Sultanahmet Köftecisi Selim Usta.