Neighbourhoods

This city has centres on two continents

Most visitors stay in Sultanahmet, see the monuments, and never cross. That is a mistake worth correcting on your first afternoon, because the crossing costs a bus fare and takes twenty minutes.

The European side

Sultanahmet is the old city and the monuments: dense, walkable, and almost entirely given over to visitors. Beyoğlu, across the Golden Horn and up the hill, is the nineteenth-century European quarter — İstiklal, Galata, the bars and the music. Beşiktaş and the Bosphorus villages north of it are where the money is. Balat and Fener, along the Golden Horn, are the old Jewish and Greek quarters and the most photographed streets in the city.

The Asian side

Kadıköy is the one to go to: a large, lively, unselfconscious neighbourhood with a food market, a bar street and none of Sultanahmet's economy. Üsküdar is older, quieter and more conservative, with two Sinan mosques on the waterfront and the best view back at the old city there is.

How to choose where to stay

Sultanahmet if it is a short trip and you want to walk to the monuments. Beyoğlu or Karaköy if you want to be somewhere that exists in the evening. Kadıköy if you have a week and want to live here rather than visit.