Turkey Travel Guide

Top Things to See

• Discover Istanbul’s Old City which was the capital of the Christian Byzantines and then the Islamic Ottoman empire. Highlights include the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofya Museum and the city’s Archaeological Museum.

• Explore the northern suburbs of Istanbul by ferry-boat, criss-crossing the Bosphorus to visit villages that stretch up to the mouth of the Black Sea.

• Visit the old Ottoman city of Bursa south of Istanbul, with its beautiful 15th-century Green Mosque, covered bazaar and Islamic Art Museum. Close to the city is the 2,543m (8,343 ft) mountain of Uludağ with glacial lakes and a winter ski resort.

• Witness the bizarre sport of grease wrestling at the Kirkpinar Festival (website: www.kirkpinar.com) outside Edirne in early summer, or the even stranger spectacle of camel wrestling that takes place in mid winter at Selçuk on the Aegean coast.

• Tour the WWI battlefields and the memorials commemorating the 250,000 British, Turkish and ANZAC troops that died on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Cross the Dardanelles, the straits dividing Europe and Asia, and visit the ruins of ancient Troy.

• Take in the grandeur of the remains of the Hellenistic and Roman city of Ephesus (modern Selçuk). Founded in the 13th century BC, it has been carefully restored and is now one of the most spectacular ancient sites in the world.

• Visit Bodrum (website: www.bodrum-info.org), site of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Mausoleum of Mausolus, and now Turkey’s finest Aegean resort. Dominated by the Castle of St John, the town is renowned for its shopping, dining and nightlife.

• Experience the charm of the Mediterranean city of Antalya, with its atmospheric old town and harbor, Kaleiçi. Visit the superb Archaeological Museum and tour the many historic sights surrounding the city.

• See the mysterious Lycian tombs that litter the coastline around the resorts of Kaş and Kalkan.

• Seek out the superb Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and the Ethnographic Museum in Ankara. The Turkish capital is overlooked by many visitors but has some excellent museums.

• Visit the historic town of Safranbolu, between Istanbul and Ankara, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its Ottoman architecture.

• Tour Konya, capital of the Selçuk empire and one of Turkey’s great religious centers. The city is home to the Mevlana Tekkesi, the monastery and mausoleum of Mevlana Celâddin Rumi, one of Islam’s most celebrated mystics and founder of the Whirling Dervishes (website: www.whirlingdervishistanbul.com).

• Do not miss Cappadocia. Marvel at the spectacular landscape of rock cones, pinnacles and ravines. There are cave houses, underground cities and subterranean churches to explore, plus visitors can stay in a cave hotel too.

• See the spectacular 14th-century Greek Orthodox SumelaMonastery, 54km (34 miles) from Trabzon. Set into a sheer cliff, 300m (1,000ft) above the valley floor, it contains some magnificent frescoes.

• Use the far eastern city of Van as a base to travel along the south shore of Lake Van and catch a boat out to the 10th-century Armenian church (website: www.akdamarkilisesi.com) on Akdamar island, famous for its intricate stone reliefs depicting biblical scenes.

Top Things to Do

•Shop in the world’s largest covered market, Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, then head uptown to browse for cut-price fashion goods and clothing in the department stores along Istiklal Caddesi or upmarket Nisantasi.

• Take a ferry from the Eminönü dock in Istanbul to the Princes’ Islands, a tranquil summer getaway popular with Istanbulis where cars are banned and horse-drawn carriages and bicycles are the transport of choice.

• Sip tea or smoke a nargile as you watch the sunset at one of the traditional cafes beneath Istanbul’s Galata Bridge.

• Trek the Lycian Way, which stretches for 500km (311 miles) between Fethiye and Antalya, providing a month’s walking through some of Turkey’s most spectacular scenery (website: www.lycianway.com).

• Experience white-water rafting on the Dalaman River (website: www.oludenizbeach.com/rafting.html, the Köprülü River, the Zamanti River or the Coruh River, which is rated by professionals as one of the top rafting descents in the world.

• Relax in a steamy Turkish bath, known as a hammam, and have a scrub and massage. In Istanbul, the most popular historic baths are the Galatasaray Hammam in Beyoğlu and Cağaloğlu Hammam in Sultanahmet, though local baths are often just as good.

• Catch a ceremony by the renowned Whirling Dervishes (website: www.whirlingdervishistanbul.com), who are members of the Mevlevi Order and who perform the famous whirling dance (Sema). Their amazing ceremony can be seen in Konya, where the Order originated, or in Istanbul.

• Go trekking in the wild Kaçkar mountain range of Turkey’s northeast, close to the Georgian frontier.

• Bathe in the warm therapeutic waters of natural travertine pools at Pamukkale near Denizli in the Aegean region (www.pamukkalethermal.com).

• Wander through the very Middle Eastern-feeling bazaar at Şanliurfa in the southeast, close to the Syrian border, and pay a visit to the cave where Abraham is said to have been born.

• Escape the foreign tourist hordes and join holidaying Turks at one of the small Black Sea coast towns like Ünye or Giresun - less crowded, cooler and greener than the Mediterranean coast.

• Take an early morning hot-air balloon flight over the stunning, other-worldly moonscape of Cappadocia in central Anatolia (website: www.kapadokyaballoons.com).

• Look for fragments of Noah’s Ark, reputed to have washed up here, on the slopes of 5,165m (16,945ft) Mount Ararat in Turkey’s far eastern region (website: www.ararattrek.com).

• Examine the Ottoman architect Sinan’s finest achievement at the 16th-century Selimiye mosque at Edirne in Thrace close to the Bulgarian border.

• Charter a gulet, a traditional wooden boat (website: www.boatingturkey.net), for a leisurely cruise along the Aegean or Mediterranean coast. Itineraries of a week or more are possible, with a variety of destinations and ports of call.