Every operator along the Eminonu waterfront sells a Bosphorus cruise, and the sign outside each one shows a photograph of the same water. The public ferry that leaves from the same quays costs a standard city transport fare, takes the same channel, stops at villages on both shores, and is used by people going to work. It is the single largest gap between price and value anywhere in the city.

Hagia Sophia, under its current rules

The building has been a cathedral, a mosque, a museum, and since 2020 a mosque again, and that last change altered how visitors use it. It is open for prayer, so it closes to sightseeing during the five daily prayer times and for longer around midday on Fridays. Since 2024 foreign visitors enter through a separate upper-gallery route with a paid ticket, while the ground floor remains a working prayer hall. Shoes come off at the door, women cover their hair with a scarf, and the building supplies neither: bring your own, or buy one from the stalls outside at three times what it is worth.

What survives from the Byzantine centuries is mostly above head height. The mosaics in the upper gallery, including the Deesis panel with its extraordinarily gentle face of Christ, were plastered over for four hundred years and uncovered in the 1930s, which is why they are in the condition they are.

The dome is 31 metres across and stands 55 metres above the floor. It has partly collapsed twice, in 558 and again in 989, and the ribs you can see are from the repairs.

The Blue Mosque is directly opposite, free, and closed to visitors during prayers. Between the two sits the old Hippodrome, now a long public park with an Egyptian obelisk in it that was already 1,900 years old when the Romans put it there.

The Basilica Cistern, for the temperature as much as the columns

Under the street behind Hagia Sophia there is a sixth-century underground reservoir the size of a cathedral, held up by 336 columns, most of them taken from older Roman buildings. Two of them stand on carved Medusa heads, one on its side and one upside down, and nobody knows why; the honest answer given by the site itself is that they were probably just the right height.

The cistern is cold. In August, when the streets above are at 33 degrees, this is the most comfortable half hour of the day, and that is a real reason to schedule it for the afternoon rather than the morning.

It is ticketed, timed in high season, and the evening slots include lighting effects that some visitors find atmospheric and others find silly.

The Grand Bazaar, and what actually happens there

Sixty-one covered streets, around 4,000 shops, in business since 1461, closed on Sundays and public holidays. That is the Grand Bazaar as a fact, and as an experience it is a place most one-day visitors walk through in twenty minutes without buying anything, which is a perfectly reasonable use of it.

Prices are not fixed and the first number is not the price. Bargaining is expected in the carpet, leather and jewellery trades and is close to meaningless in the spice and food stalls. If you are not going to buy, say so early: the tea that arrives when you sit down is a business expense and both sides know it.

The Spice Bazaar down near Eminonu is smaller, food-focused, and the place to buy the things people actually take home. Turkish delight sold by weight from a counter where they cut it in front of you is a different product from the boxed version, and the shops around the Spice Bazaar will let you taste before buying.

Lunch at the water, standing up

At Eminonu, below the Galata Bridge, boats moored at the quay grill mackerel and serve it in half a loaf with onion and rocket. The balik ekmek is one of the cheapest hot meals in Istanbul, eaten standing or on a plastic stool facing the water, and it has been sold from that spot for decades. The boats rock in the wake of the ferries while the cooks work, which is either part of the appeal or a reason to eat elsewhere.

Fishermen line the bridge above, and the lower deck of the same bridge is a row of restaurants at four times the price for a similar fish.

Ask for it with pickle juice on the side if you want the local version. Most visitors do not, once.

The ferry, which is the point of the day

Buy an Istanbulkart at any machine, load it, and take the ferry from Eminonu or Karakoy to Kadikoy on the Asian side. The crossing takes about twenty minutes, costs a normal fare, and puts you on a different continent. Gulls follow the boat the whole way because passengers feed them simit, the sesame bread rings sold on board, and the tea sold in tulip glasses by a man with a tray is part of the arrangement rather than a tourist service.

Kadikoy is where Istanbul goes about its business without an audience. The market streets around Gunesli Bahce Sokak sell fish, cheese and pickles to people cooking dinner, the bars on Kadife Sokak are full of students, and there is not a carpet shop in sight.

Coming back after dark, sit on the port side. The old city rises on the skyline with the mosques lit from below, and it is the view that every postcard of Istanbul is trying and failing to be.

Across the Aegean, Athens makes the obvious pairing, and the two cities share more history than either tends to advertise.

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