# Explore Turkey: full text Source: https://www.exploreturkey.com/ · Contact: editors@exploreturkey.com --- # Istanbul URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/istanbul/ Summary: A practical guide to Istanbul's historic core: the land walls, Chora, Sultanahmet, Süleymaniye, Dolmabahçe and the Bosphorus, with a three-day walking plan. - Position: 41.01° N, 28.98° E - Founded: c. 660 BC as Byzantion - Capital: 330 to 1922 - UNESCO: Historic Areas, 1985 - Airports: IST 40 km · SAW 45 km - Time needed: 3 full days ## The city on two continents Istanbul sits on both shores of the Bosphorus, a 33 km strait that separates Europe from Asia. Every building worth crossing the world for is on the European side, on a peninsula bounded by the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara and a wall. That peninsula was Byzantion, then Constantinople, then the Ottoman capital, and it never stopped being inhabited. Three layers survive on top of each other. Roman and Byzantine means the Hippodrome, the cisterns, [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) and the land walls; Ottoman means the great mosques, [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/) and the bazaars; the nineteenth century means Dolmabahçe and the Bosphorus mansions. A good visit takes them in that order, which is roughly the order of the [history of Anatolia](/history/) itself. ## The land walls Emperor Theodosius II finished the land walls in 413 and they held for a thousand years. They run 6.5 km from the Marmara to the Golden Horn, with an inner wall, an outer wall and a moat. They were breached once, on May 29, 1453, near the gate the Ottomans still call Topkapı, the Cannon Gate. Walk a stretch rather than the whole line. The best section is between Topkapı and Edirnekapı, where the ground rises to the highest point of the old city and Sinan's Mihrimah Sultan Mosque stands just inside the gate. From Edirnekapı it is a ten-minute walk downhill to Chora. ## Chora The Chora church, called Kariye in Turkish, holds the finest surviving Byzantine mosaics and frescoes in the city. The name means "in the country" because the original monastery stood outside Constantine's first wall. The present building was decorated between about 1316 and 1321 for Theodore Metochites, the emperor's treasurer, who appears in one mosaic offering the church to Christ. Two narthexes carry the mosaic cycles: the life of the Virgin, the infancy of Christ and his miracles. The side chapel, the parecclesion, is painted rather than mosaic. Its apse fresco of the Anastasis, Christ hauling Adam and Eve out of their tombs, is the single image most visitors remember from Istanbul. > **Note:** Chora returned to use as a mosque in 2024. It remains open to visitors outside prayer times, and the figurative images are covered only during prayers. Check hours before you go; they shift with the prayer calendar. ## Sultanahmet Square The square is the floor of the Roman Hippodrome, built by Septimius Severus and completed by Constantine. The track was 370 m long and about 118 m wide, and the central barrier, the spina, still holds three monuments in their original positions. The Egyptian obelisk of Thutmose III, brought here in 390, stands on a base carved with Theodosius I watching the races. Beside it are the bronze Serpent Column from Delphi, cast after the Greek victory at Plataea in 479 BC, and the rough masonry obelisk once sheathed in gilded bronze. The four bronze horses that stood at the entrance are in Venice, taken in 1204. At the north end, the German Fountain marks where the imperial box stood. [Justinian's Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) and the Blue Mosque face each other across the square. Sultan Ahmed I's mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 by Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, a pupil of Sinan, and takes its nickname from the [İznik tiles](/anatolia/) inside. Its six minarets caused a scandal at the time; Mecca had six too, and a seventh was added there to settle the matter. ## Sinan and the imperial mosques Mimar Sinan, born a Christian near Kayseri around 1490, was conscripted as a janissary and became chief architect in 1538. He worked for fifty years and left over 300 buildings, forty of them in Istanbul. The Süleymaniye, built between 1550 and 1557 on the third hill, is the one to see first. The Süleymaniye is a complex, not a mosque alone: schools, a hospital, a hostel, a bath and shops share the platform. The dome is 53 m high and 26.5 m across, held in a frame of four piers so cleanly that the interior reads as one room. Süleyman and his wife Hürrem are buried in the garden behind the qibla wall, and the terrace looks straight down onto the Golden Horn. Sinan's smaller mosques reward a detour. Rüstem Paşa, hidden above the shops of Tahtakale, is lined with the best İznik tiles in the city, and Şehzade, his first great imperial commission, is a five-minute walk from Süleymaniye. Mihrimah Sultan at Edirnekapı, on the highest ground inside the walls, is a single 20 m dome on four piers with walls turned almost entirely into windows. ## The bazaars and the hans The Grand Bazaar grew outward from a stone bedesten that Mehmed II built soon after 1453. Around it, streets took the names of the trades that worked there: quilt makers, fez makers, slipper makers. At its largest the covered market held about 4,000 shops, 40 hans and more than 50 streets, and most of that fabric still stands. The hans are the part to seek out. Behind the covered streets, courtyard buildings like Zincirli Han and Büyük Valide Han keep workshops on their upper floors. Down the hill toward Eminönü, the Spice Bazaar of 1664 sits beside the New Mosque, and the streets around it are where the city actually shops for [Turkish food](/turkish-cuisine/), coffee and [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/). Karaköy, across the Galata Bridge, is where Istanbul buys its [baklava](/baklava/). Hacı Bekir's shop of 1777, where [lokum](/turkish-delight/) was first sold, still trades in Bahçekapı a few steps from the Spice Bazaar. ## Dolmabahçe and the nineteenth century By 1843 the sultans had tired of [Topkapı](/topkapi-palace/). Abdülmecid I ordered a palace on the Bosphorus shore at Dolmabahçe, a "filled garden" reclaimed from the sea two centuries earlier. The Balyan family of Armenian court architects finished it in 1856: 284 m of marble facade along the water, a ceremonial hall with a four-and-a-half-ton crystal chandelier and a harem wing that outlasted the empire. Atatürk died here on November 10, 1938, and the clocks in the palace are stopped at 9:05 to mark it. Visits are by timed ticket and the interior tour moves fast, so book the first slot of the day. Beylerbeyi, the summer palace on the Asian shore, is smaller and calmer. ## The Bosphorus The cheapest and best Bosphorus trip is the public ferry. Long cruises from Eminönü run up to Anadolu Kavağı near the Black Sea mouth and back, passing Dolmabahçe, Ortaköy, the two suspension bridges and the Ottoman fortress of Rumeli Hisarı, built in 1452 to choke the city's supply line before the siege. Commuter ferries to Üsküdar or Kadıköy take twenty minutes and cost the same as a tram ride. Kadıköy is the ancient Khalkedon, settled before Byzantion, and today it is the best place in the city to eat. Its market streets sell [fish, pickles, cheese and pastry](/turkish-cuisine/) to people who live there, not to visitors. Cross in the late afternoon, eat, and take the ferry back after dark to see the peninsula lit from the water. ## Three days, in order Day one is Sultanahmet: Hagia Sophia at opening, the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern, then Topkapı Palace through the afternoon. Day two starts at the land walls, walks Edirnekapı to Chora, then drops to the Golden Horn and back up to Süleymaniye and the bazaars. Day three is the water: Dolmabahçe by timed ticket, a ferry up the Bosphorus and an evening in Kadıköy. Spring and fall are the seasons. July and August are hot and crowded, and the Sultanahmet queues start before opening. If you have longer than three days, the rest of the country is a short flight away: [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) is 730 km east, [Ephesus](/ephesus/) an hour's flight south, and the [Lycian coast](/lycia/) an hour and a quarter. ## Questions **How many days do I need in Istanbul?** Three full days cover the historic peninsula, one Bosphorus crossing and a morning at Chora or the land walls. A fourth day lets you slow down in Kadıköy or Balat. **Is Istanbul walkable?** The old city is, with hills. Sultanahmet to Süleymaniye to the Grand Bazaar is under 2 km, and the tram fills in the rest. Crossing to Galata or Kadıköy is best by ferry. **Which side of the Bosphorus should I stay on?** Sultanahmet puts you next to the big sites but empties out at night. Karaköy, Cihangir or Kadıköy give you restaurants and ferries and keep the old city fifteen minutes away. **What is the difference between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque?** Hagia Sophia is a sixth-century Byzantine church that became a mosque; the Blue Mosque is a seventeenth-century Ottoman mosque built to face it. They stand about 300 m apart across Sultanahmet Square. **Is the Grand Bazaar worth visiting?** For the building, yes: the fifteenth-century bedesten at its core and the covered streets are the point. For shopping, the surrounding hans and the Spice Bazaar are better value. --- # Hagia Sophia URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/hagia-sophia/ Summary: Justinian's church of 537, its 31 m dome, the gallery mosaics that survived iconoclasm and 1453, and what to expect now that it is a working mosque again. - Position: 41.01° N, 28.98° E - Built: 532 to 537 - Architects: Anthemius & Isidorus - Dome: 55.6 m high, 31 m wide - Status: Mosque since 2020 - Time needed: 90 minutes ## What you are looking at Hagia Sophia is a church built in five years by an emperor who wanted to outdo Solomon. It was the largest enclosed space in the world for nearly a thousand years, and its dome taught every later architect in [Istanbul](/istanbul/), Sinan included, what a dome could be. The building has been a cathedral, a mosque, a museum and, since July 2020, a mosque again. The name means Holy Wisdom, not a saint. Two earlier churches stood on the site, the second burned in the Nika riot of January 532, and Justinian began the third thirty-nine days later. That is the building you see. ## Five years, ten thousand workers Justinian gave the job to two scientists rather than builders: Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician, and Isidorus of Miletus, who had edited Archimedes. Procopius, who watched it happen, says ten thousand workers labored under a hundred foremen. Columns came from [Ephesus](/ephesus/) and Baalbek, and colored marble from Egypt and Thessaly. The church was dedicated on December 27, 537. The nave is 32 m wide and 70 m long; with the two narthexes the building runs 100 m. Only three churches in Europe, St Peter's, Seville and Milan, cover more ground, and all were built centuries later. ## The dome, twice The first dome was too flat. Earthquakes in 553 and 557 cracked it, and it fell in 558, bringing down the eastern half dome with it. Isidorus the Younger, the nephew of the original architect, rebuilt it steeper on forty ribs with forty windows at the base, and that dome was finished in 562. It rises 55.6 m above the floor and, after fourteen centuries of repairs, is no longer round: the diameter varies between 30.9 and 31.2 m. Two half domes on the east-west axis and a system of arches and vaults carry the weight down to four piers. The heavy buttresses outside are later, some Byzantine and some Ottoman, and they are the reason the building is still standing. > **Note:** The ring of windows at the base of the dome is what makes it seem to float. Sixth-century visitors said it hung from heaven on a golden chain, and the effect still works on a bright morning around 10 a.m. ## The mosaics Justinian's decoration was gold and geometric, with no figures, and much of it survives in the vaults of the narthex. Figurative mosaics were destroyed or never made during iconoclasm, between 726 and 843, the same ban that left [Cappadocia's cave chapels](/cappadocia/) with plain painted crosses. Everything with a face that you see today dates from 867 onward. Over the Imperial Door in the inner narthex, an emperor, probably Leo VI, kneels before Christ enthroned. Over the southwest entrance, Constantine offers the city and Justinian offers the church to the Virgin. In the apse, the Virgin and Child of 867 still look down the length of the nave. The best panels are in the south gallery upstairs. The Deesis, made after the Byzantines retook the city in 1261, shows Christ between the Virgin and John the Baptist on a panel 6 m wide. The lower half has gone, but the faces are the finest surviving Byzantine mosaic work anywhere. Beside it are two imperial panels. In the Empress Zoe panel her husband's face was replaced twice as she remarried, and the Comnenus panel of 1122 shows John II with the Hungarian-born Empress Irene. Both emperors hold bags of gold, the church's endowment, which is why they were allowed on the wall at all. ## The upper galleries A stone ramp, not a staircase, leads up from the inner narthex so that the empress could be carried up in a litter. The west gallery, lit from the great windows, was the women's area, and the bay with green breccia columns and a marbled floor marked the empress's seat. Look at the parapets: among centuries of scratched names there is a runic inscription left by a Viking guardsman. The wooden tie beams between the arches are original sixth-century work, carved with patterns. The gallery vaults were repainted in the restoration of 1847 to 1849 by the Fossati brothers, Swiss architects working for Sultan Abdülmecid, who also uncovered and recorded the mosaics before plastering them again. ## 1453 and after The city fell on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, after a fifty-three-day siege. Mehmed II rode to Hagia Sophia the same afternoon, found it neglected, with doors lying in the courtyard, and declared it a mosque. Friday prayers were held that week. The Ottomans added what a mosque needs and left the rest. A wooden minaret went up first, replaced by the brick one on the southeast; the three stone minarets came under Bayezid II and Selim II, the latter two designed by Sinan, the architect whose own mosques fill [the city](/istanbul/). Inside, a mihrab was set slightly off axis to point to Mecca, and a minbar and a sultan's loge were added. The eight great calligraphic roundels with the names of God, the Prophet and the caliphs were hung in the nineteenth century. Five sultans are buried in the garden, in tombs that reused the baptistery and added new domed chambers. ## Museum, then mosque again In 1934 the [Turkish Republic](/history/) made the building a museum, and the plaster came off the mosaics for the first time since the Fossatis. For eighty-six years the church and the mosque were visible together, which is how most of the world's photographs of the interior were taken. On July 24, 2020, a court ruling returned it to use as a mosque. For visitors the practical change came in January 2024. The prayer hall on the ground floor is now for worshippers; foreign visitors enter by a separate gate, buy a ticket and follow a route through the upper galleries. That route passes every major mosaic, so you lose the floor of the nave but not the art. ## How to visit Go at opening or in the last hour, and never at Friday noon. Dress as for any mosque: covered shoulders and knees, a head covering for women, shoes off in carpeted areas. The ticket line and the security line are separate; the queue you see from the square is usually the second one. Ninety minutes is enough. Then cross the square for the Blue Mosque, walk five minutes to the Basilica Cistern, or go through the outer gate of [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/), which begins directly behind the church. Hafız Mustafa, the confectioner founded in 1864, has a shop on Divanyolu two minutes from the square, the closest good [baklava](/baklava/) and [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/) to the site. If Byzantine art is the reason you came, keep an afternoon for Chora at the land walls. Justinian's other great church, [St John at Ephesus](/ephesus/), is a ruin you can walk through, and the rock churches of [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) show what the same faith built without an emperor's budget. For where all this sits in the longer story, see the [history of Anatolia](/history/). ## Questions **Can non-Muslims visit Hagia Sophia?** Yes. Since 2024 foreign visitors enter through a separate gate to the upper galleries with a paid ticket, while the ground floor is reserved for prayer. Shoulders and knees should be covered and women need a head covering. **Are the mosaics still visible?** The gallery mosaics, including the Deesis, the Zoe panel and the Comnenus panel, are fully visible from the visitor route. Figurative images in the prayer hall are covered during prayers. **How long does a visit take?** About 90 minutes for the galleries and the exterior. Add half an hour if you want to look at the tombs of the sultans in the garden and the baptistery. **What is the best time to visit?** Right at opening, or in the last hour before closing. Avoid Friday midday, when the building closes for congregational prayer. **How is Hagia Sophia different from the Blue Mosque?** Hagia Sophia is a sixth-century church built by Justinian and later converted; the Blue Mosque across the square is an Ottoman mosque of 1617 designed in imitation of it. Both are open to visitors. --- # Topkapı Palace & the Harem URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/topkapi-palace/ Summary: How the Ottoman palace worked, court by court: the kitchens and their Chinese porcelain, the Harem, the kaftans, the relics and the treasury and visiting tips. - Position: 41.01° N, 28.98° E - Built: from 1460s, gate 1478 - In use: 1478 to 1856 - Area: about 70 hectares - Porcelain: 10,700 Chinese pieces - Time needed: Half a day ## A city inside a wall Topkapı is not one building but a walled town of gates, courtyards, kitchens, barracks and pavilions on the first hill of [Istanbul](/istanbul/), where Byzantion's acropolis stood. Mehmed II began it in the 1460s, a few years after taking the city, and the Imperial Gate carries the date 1478. Sultans lived and ruled here until Abdülmecid [moved to Dolmabahçe](/istanbul/) in 1856. The plan is a sequence. Each of four courts is more private than the last, and each gate marks a line that fewer people were allowed to cross. Read the palace that way and the layout, which looks random, makes sense. ## First court: the public Anyone could enter the first court through the Imperial Gate, which opened after morning prayers and closed after the evening call. This was the service zone: bakeries, the mint, the infirmary, storehouses and the church of Hagia Eirene, which the Ottomans kept as an armory rather than converting it. The court was also where crowds gathered for processions and where the janissaries drew their pay. Hagia Eirene predates [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) and is the only Byzantine church in the city never turned into a mosque. It is now open as a museum and concert hall. The palace's own church aside, the older story of the site belongs to [the Byzantine centuries](/history/). ## Second court: the state The Gate of Salutation, with its two pointed towers, is where the museum ticket is checked today and where every visitor except the sultan once dismounted. Its iron doors are signed by the smith Giyas bin Mehmed and dated 1524. Beyond it, the second court was the stage for the empire's business. On the left, under a small tower, the Imperial Council met four times a week. The sultan did not sit with his viziers; he listened, when he chose to, from a grilled window above them. On the right, the [palace kitchens](/turkish-cuisine/) ran the length of the court under a row of chimneys, feeding four to five thousand people a day and up to ten thousand on festivals. The kitchens now hold the porcelain. The palace owns about 10,700 pieces of Chinese ware, from the Song and Yuan dynasties through the Ming to the Qing, plus a smaller Japanese group, the largest such collection outside China and Taiwan. Chinese celadon was prized at court partly because it was believed to change color if food was poisoned; the blue-and-white came in bulk with Selim I's campaigns to Tabriz in 1514 and Egypt in 1517. ## The Harem The Harem opens off the second court and is the best reason to visit. The word means "forbidden" and the complex was exactly that: about 300 rooms where the sultan's mother, wives, concubines, children and the eunuchs who guarded them lived. It was the only part of the palace where the sultan slept. The head of the Harem was the Valide Sultan, the sultan's mother, not any wife. Below her, a hierarchy of women ran the household: the treasurer, the keeper of the pantry, the instructors who taught music, calligraphy, embroidery and court manners. Girls arrived young, mostly from the Caucasus after the sixteenth century, and were trained for years before any question of the sultan's attention arose. The system was a school as much as anything else. A concubine who never caught the sultan's eye could leave after about nine years with a dowry and an arranged marriage to an official. One who bore a son became a haseki or, later, a kadın. If that son became sultan she became Valide and, for a few reigns in the seventeenth century, the effective ruler of the empire. From Bayezid II onward, sultans stopped marrying foreign princesses at all; the dynasty reproduced itself through the Harem. The visitor route runs from the eunuchs' quarters through the Valide's apartments to the Imperial Hall, the tiled Privy Chamber of Murad III by Sinan, and the so-called Cage, the rooms where princes were kept after the practice of fratricide ended around 1600. > **Note:** The European image of the Harem comes largely from Ottaviano Bon, a Venetian ambassador who never entered it, writing in 1606. Treat the handkerchief stories as legend. The building itself, small-roomed and dark, tells a more domestic story. ## Third court: the sultan's household The Gate of Felicity leads to the Enderun, the inner school and residence. Directly inside is the Audience Chamber, where the sultan received ambassadors and viziers on a throne under a canopy. Around the court lived the pages, boys recruited from Christian families and educated here for careers as governors and generals. The court holds the collections. The Treasury, in the pavilion Mehmed II built, shows the Topkapı Dagger with its three emeralds, the 86-carat Spoonmaker's Diamond, the throne sent by Nadir Shah, the Byzantine reliquary with the skull of John the Baptist and the sword attributed to Osman, founder of the dynasty. Across the court, the Privy Chamber holds the Sacred Relics that Selim I brought from Cairo in 1517 with the caliphate: the Prophet's mantle, a letter in his name, swords of the early caliphs and the keys to the Kaaba. Forty guards once watched these rooms, and a reader recites the Quran continuously during opening hours. ## Kaftans and textiles The costume collection is the most direct contact you will have with the sultans themselves. Kaftans were stored under each sultan's name after his death, so the museum can date them reign by reign from Mehmed II onward. The best are sixteenth century: heavy silks and brocades [woven in Bursa](/anatolia/) and Istanbul, patterned with crescents, tulips or the three-dot çintemani motif, often in a scale no European court would have dared. Bursa cloth was an export. Popes wore vestments cut from Ottoman brocade, embroidered with crosses after purchase in Venice, and examples survive in the Hermitage and in monasteries across Europe. Children's kaftans, turbans, embroidered talismanic shirts covered in Quranic text and prayer rugs fill out the display. ## Fourth court: the gardens The last court is a terrace of pavilions and pools rather than a courtyard. The Revan Kiosk of 1636 and the Baghdad Kiosk of 1639 were built to celebrate Murad IV's campaigns and are the finest tiled rooms in the palace. Between them, the gilded canopy of the İftariye is where the sultan broke his Ramadan fast at sunset, looking over the Golden Horn. The Circumcision Room, rebuilt under Sultan İbrahim in 1641, reuses sixteenth-century İznik panels on its facade. Below the terrace, the tulip gardens run down toward the sea walls and the Marmara. On a clear day this terrace is the best free view in the old city. ## How to visit Closed Tuesdays. Arrive at 9 a.m. and go straight to the Harem, then work backward through the third court before the tour groups reach it. The palace ticket and the Harem ticket are separate, and half a day is realistic; an afternoon on its own is not enough for the Harem and the Treasury both. The kitchens are worth thirty minutes on your way out, and not only for the porcelain. The scale of them explains a good deal about [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/), which took its shape in these rooms: the palace ran separate kitchens for sweets and for helva, and the [baklava](/baklava/) procession to the janissaries once began here. Hacı Bekir, confectioner to the court from 1777, supplied the palace with [lokum](/turkish-delight/) and still trades in Eminönü. The tiles in the Harem and the kiosks came from İznik, covered on the [Inner Anatolia](/anatolia/) sheet, and the kaftan silks from Bursa. For the dynasty behind the palace, see the [history of Anatolia](/history/). ## Questions **Is the Harem included in the Topkapı ticket?** No. The Harem is a separate ticket bought at the palace or online, and it is the part most worth paying for. Allow 45 minutes for it alone. **How long does Topkapı Palace take?** Three to four hours for the four courts, the Harem and the main collections. If you only have ninety minutes, do the Harem and the third court. **Which day is Topkapı closed?** Tuesdays. On other days it opens at 9 a.m., and the first hour is the quietest. **What is the difference between Topkapı and Dolmabahçe?** Topkapı is the classical Ottoman palace, a city of pavilions and courtyards used from 1478 to 1856. Dolmabahçe is the European-style palace on the Bosphorus that replaced it. **Can you see the Topkapı Dagger and the Spoonmaker's Diamond?** Yes, both are in the Treasury in the third court, when it is open. The Treasury closes periodically for restoration, so check before you go. --- # Cappadocia URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/cappadocia/ Summary: Cappadocia in two days: Göreme's painted rock churches, the Ihlara gorge, Soğanlı, Derinkuyu underground city, balloon mornings and where to stay. - Position: 38.64° N, 34.83° E - Elevation: 1,000 to 1,300 m - UNESCO: Göreme National Park, 1985 - Airports: Nevşehir 40 km · Kayseri 75 km - Best months: April to June, Sept to Oct - Time needed: 2 full days ## How the rock was made Three volcanoes, Erciyes, Hasan and Güllüdağ, buried this plateau under ash between ten and two million years ago. The ash settled into tuff, a stone soft enough to cut with a hand tool yet firm enough to hold a vaulted ceiling. Wind and the Melendiz stream did the first carving, and people have been doing the rest ever since. The cones and pillars known as fairy chimneys form where a cap of harder basalt protects the tuff below it, the same volcanic story told for the whole peninsula on the [Anatolia sheet](/anatolia/). Erosion eats the surrounding rock and leaves a column with a stone hat. The best groups stand in Paşabağı, Zelve and the Love Valley north of Göreme. Stone Age axes have been found on the plateau, and the Hittites farmed it. The Cappadocia most people come to see, though, belongs to the [Byzantine centuries](/history/). From the fourth century onward, Christian communities carved churches, refectories and cells into the cliffs, and dug entire towns underground when Arab raiders came close. ## Göreme Open-Air Museum Seven km from Ürgüp, the museum is a single hillside holding a monastery complex: eight churches, seven refectories and a scatter of grave chambers. Almost everything dates from the ninth to the eleventh century. Start with the Maidens' Monastery, a six-story block from the first half of the eleventh century, and the Chapel of St. Basil opposite it. Two church types stand side by side. Plain red geometric decoration belongs to the iconoclast period, 726 to 843, when images were forbidden. The narrative fresco cycles of the life of Christ came afterward, painted on a layer of plaster over the rough tuff, provincial cousins of the gold mosaics in [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/). ### The Dark Church Karanlık Kilise has the best-preserved frescoes in the region because it has almost no windows. Sunlight never faded its blues and golds. It sits on a two-story rock mass south of the courtyard, with a stone refectory on the lower level and a domed narthex above. Expect a separate ticket and a queue, so come at opening time. The Apple Church, the Snake Church with its Deisis scene, and the Sandal Church complete the core circuit. Across the road, outside the main ticket area, the Tokalı Church is the largest in Göreme and has the finest painting of all. Many visitors skip it by mistake. > **Note:** Photography is banned inside most of the painted churches, and guards enforce it. Buy the museum guidebook if you want the images. ## The valleys between Göreme town sits at the head of a fan of valleys, and walking them is the point of coming. The Kılıçlar valley runs east from the museum toward Aktepe, past the Kılıçlar church, a ninth- or tenth-century building on a Greek-cross plan with a dome on four columns. Aktepe itself is the sunrise viewpoint, 2 km uphill from the Ürgüp road. The Zemi and Görkün valleys lead west toward Uçhisar, passing the Hidden Church and the El Nazar church. The Red and Rose valleys north of the museum are the classic late-afternoon walk, three hours of soft trail between pink cliffs that end at Çavuşin. Zelve, 4 km from Avanos, is a whole abandoned rock village of parallel ravines, inhabited until 1952. Uçhisar castle is a single fortress-shaped rock riddled with rooms. It is the highest point on the plateau and the only place where you can read the whole landscape at once. Go for sunset, not midday. ## Ihlara valley The Aksaray road forks at the eleventh km toward Ihlara. The valley is a gorge 80 to 100 m deep cut by the Melendiz stream, called Peristrema in Byzantine sources, and it runs 14 km from Ihlara village to Selime. Around a hundred churches are cut into its walls, and about a dozen are open. The Ağaçaltı church near the entrance stairs is a cross-in-square building with a Byzantine Ascension in its dome. Farther along, the Kırkdamaltı church carries a portrait of the Seljuk sultan Mesud II beside the Byzantine donors, which tells you how the two populations lived together after 1071. The point is explained in the [history of Anatolia](/history/). Walk the valley floor from Ihlara to Belisırma, the shaded and easy half, and take a taxi back. Selime's cathedral at the far end looks from the road like an apartment block. Inside, two columns and a pillar divide the naves, and black-and-orange frescoes of the life of Christ fill the barrel-vaulted side aisles. ## Soğanlı Two valleys south of Ürgüp, 45 km by road, and far quieter than either Göreme or Ihlara. The Ürgüp to Damsa road runs 13 km between poplars to the village, and the valley begins 500 m beyond on foot. The churches here are cut into free-standing cones rather than cliff faces, which gives Soğanlı its odd rooftop skyline. Karabaş, Yılanlı and the domed Kubbeli are the three to see. Local women sell the cloth dolls that have been made here for generations. Allow half a day and bring lunch. ## Underground cities Derinkuyu goes down eight levels and could shelter several thousand people with their animals. Kaymaklı, 10 km north, is shallower and less crowded. Both share the same engineering: ventilation shafts that also served as wells, corridors that slope gently between levels, and rolling millstone doors that could only be closed from inside. Chapels, wineries, stables and grain silos are all there. Tuff does not absorb moisture, which kept the rooms dry enough to store food for months. Some fifty underground settlements are known, including Özkonak, Mucur and Tatların, but Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı are the two with proper lighting and marked routes. ## Practical notes Base yourself in Göreme or Ürgüp. Kayseri airport is 75 km away and Nevşehir 40 km; both have shuttle services that meet every flight and cost less than a taxi. From [Istanbul](/istanbul/) the flight takes about an hour, the bus about ten. Balloon flights leave before dawn and depend entirely on wind; the aviation authority grounds them roughly one morning in four, so book for your first morning to keep a second chance. Museum tickets are sold separately for the Dark Church and for the underground cities. The Museum Pass Cappadocia covers most of them if you plan to see more than four. The sweet shops of Ürgüp and Avanos sell dried apricots, pistachio [baklava](/baklava/) and rose [lokum](/turkish-delight/) for the road. Ask for Gaziantep pistachio; the local walnut versions are cheaper and drier. Cappadocia pairs naturally with [Konya](/anatolia/), 230 km southwest, on the road to the [Lycian coast](/lycia/). The plateau's own kitchen leans on pottery-baked meat and Ürgüp wine, both covered in [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/). If you are coming from the [Aegean](/ephesus/), the Pamukkale road is the sensible route. ## Questions **How many days do I need in Cappadocia?** Two full days cover the Göreme museum, one valley walk, one underground city and a balloon morning. Add a third day if you want Ihlara or Soğanlı, which are each a half-day trip. **Where should I stay: Göreme, Ürgüp or Uçhisar?** Göreme is the most convenient base with the most cave hotels and tour pickups. Ürgüp is quieter and better for restaurants. Uçhisar has the views and the highest prices. **Is the balloon flight worth it?** Yes, if the weather allows. Flights leave before sunrise, last about an hour, and are cancelled by the civil aviation authority whenever the wind is too strong, roughly one morning in four. **Can I visit Cappadocia in winter?** Yes. Snow on the fairy chimneys is striking and hotels are cheaper, but balloon cancellations are more frequent and some valley trails close after heavy falls. **Which underground city should I choose?** Derinkuyu is deeper and more dramatic. Kaymaklı is shallower, wider and less crowded, and the better choice if you dislike tight spaces. **Do I need a car?** Not for Göreme itself. For Ihlara, Soğanlı and the underground cities a rental car or a day tour saves hours; local buses exist but run to a farmer's timetable. --- # Lycia & the Turquoise Coast URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/lycia/ Summary: Turkey's Mediterranean coast, Fethiye to Antalya: Lycian rock tombs at Xanthos and Myra, Kekova's sunken city, Aspendos, and how a Blue Voyage gulet trip works. - Position: 36.36° N, 29.32° E (Xanthos) - UNESCO: Xanthos-Letoon, 1988 - Lycian Way: 540 km, Fethiye to Antalya - Airports: Dalaman 50 km · Antalya - Sailing season: May to late October - Time needed: 5 to 7 days ## Who the Lycians were Lycia is the mountainous bulge of coast between Fethiye and Antalya. Its people spoke their own language, wrote it in their own alphabet, and ran the first federation in history with proportional voting: the Lycian League, which the framers of the American constitution later read about in Montesquieu. Homer has them fighting for [Troy](/ephesus/) under Sarpedon, which puts them here by 1200 BC. They are remembered above all for their tombs. Lycians carved graves into cliffs in the shape of timber houses, with beam ends and doors in stone, and raised others on tall pillars or in stone sarcophagi with pointed lids. Every town on this coast has a cliff full of them, and the earliest predate Alexander. The rock-cut churches of [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) are a much later chapter of the same habit. The land was never easy to hold. Xanthos burned itself down twice rather than surrender, first to the Persians around 540 BC and again to Brutus in 42 BC. [Rome absorbed the region](/history/) in AD 43, and the theaters, baths and harbors you walk through now are mostly Roman work on Lycian foundations. ## Xanthos and Letoon Xanthos was the Lycian capital, on a hill above the Eşen river 60 km southeast of Fethiye. The Roman theater sits beside two pillar tombs, one of them the Harpy Tomb whose reliefs are copies; Charles Fellows shipped the originals to the British Museum in 1842, along with the Nereid Monument. What remains is still the best single Lycian site. Letoon, 4 km away, was the federation's religious center, with three temples to Leto, Apollo and Artemis. A trilingual inscription found here in 1973, in Lycian, Greek and Aramaic, was the key to reading the Lycian language. The two sites share one UNESCO listing from 1988. Inland from Xanthos, Sidyma sits in a mountain village where Roman tombs stand among the houses and a Byzantine emperor, Marcian, later crowned in [Constantinople](/istanbul/), once recovered from fever as a young soldier. Pınara and Tlos are the other hill cities, each with a tomb-filled cliff and a theater. Saklıkent gorge, 18 km long and cold even in August, is the swim afterward. ## Myra and the Kekova coast Demre is modern Myra, 45 km east of Kaş. The rock tombs here are the most photographed on the coast, stacked up the cliff behind a large Roman theater. St. Nicholas was bishop of Myra in the fourth century. The church that held his tomb stands in the town, rebuilt many times on the same domed-basilica plan as [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) at a fraction of the size, and still visited by pilgrims every December. Andriace was Myra's harbor. St. Paul changed ships here in AD 60 on his way to Rome, and the granary Hadrian built in 129 still stands on the beach with its walls intact. Between Kaş and Demre lies Kekova, a long island sheltering a strip of water where an earthquake in the second century dropped the town of Simena into the sea. You can see walls and stairs under the surface from a boat; swimming over the ruins is banned. Kaleköy, the village on the mainland shore, has a small castle with a Lycian sarcophagus in the water below it and no road in. Üçağız, the harbor village, is the safe anchorage for the whole area. Aperlae on the Sıcak peninsula and Theimussa at Üçağız itself add two more sets of tombs for those who want them. ## Kaş and Fethiye Kaş was Antiphellos, a small Lycian port whose Hellenistic theater faces the sea and whose sarcophagi stand in the town's streets. Today it is the coast's diving and kayaking town, with a Greek island, Kastellorizo, 2 km offshore. Kalkan, 25 km west, is the quieter, more expensive neighbor above a steep harbor. Fethiye was Telmessos, and its rock tombs, above all the Ionic-fronted Tomb of Amyntas from the fourth century BC, look down on the modern harbor. The town is the western gate of the region: Dalaman airport is 50 km away, Ölüdeniz lagoon is 15 km, and most gulets leave from here or from Göcek. Its covered fish market, where you buy at one stall and have the fish grilled at the next, is the coast's best introduction to the [Turkish table](/turkish-cuisine/). ## Antalya, Perge and Aspendos Antalya is the region's city and airport, 150 km east of Demre. Kaleiçi, the walled old town, wraps around a Roman harbor below Hadrian's Gate, built for the emperor's visit in 130. The archaeological museum holds the statues from Perge and is the best on the coast. The fluted Yivli Minare beside the old town, built around 1230, is Seljuk work, the same dynasty whose capital was [Konya](/anatolia/). Perge, 17 km east, was a Hittite town called Parha before it became a Greek one. Alexander used it as a base in 333 BC. The colonnaded street, the stadium and the round Hellenistic towers are all standing, and the site is flat and easy to walk in an hour. Aspendos, 45 km from Antalya, has the most complete Roman theater in existence, built under Marcus Aurelius around 160 by the architect Zeno. Its stage building rises to the full height of the seating. Termessos, in the mountains behind Antalya at 1,000 m, is the wild alternative, a city the Romans never bothered to conquer. ## The Blue Voyage A gulet is a broad wooden motor-sailer, 20 to 30 m long, built in the yards of Bodrum and Fethiye. It carries 6 to 16 guests in cabins, a crew of three or four, and a cook. The boat anchors in a different bay each night, and days pass in swimming, reading and short walks ashore to ruins. The writer Cevat Şakir, the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, gave the trip its name in the 1950s. The classic route runs from Fethiye or Göcek east to Kekova and back. The Gulf of Fethiye alone has twelve islands and a dozen sheltered inlets, from Kızılada and Sövalye near the town to the coves of Göcek. Beyond Cape Kurtoğlu the boat passes Ölüdeniz, Butterfly Valley and the long beach at Patara, then Kalkan and Kaş, before reaching Üçağız and Kekova. > **Note:** Book a cabin charter if you are traveling as a couple; book the whole boat for a family or a group of six or more. Cabin charters run to a fixed itinerary; a private charter goes where you ask. A four-day trip covers Fethiye to Kekova one way. Seven days does the round trip with afternoons ashore at Myra, Kaş and the Gulf of Fethiye. Longer voyages continue west to Marmaris, Datça and Bodrum, the Carian coast covered on the [Aegean sheet](/ephesus/), or east past Olympos and Phaselis to Antalya. The season runs May to late October, with June and September the best months. Afternoons bring a steady west wind, so boats move in the morning and anchor by two. Bring a sun hat, soft shoes for deck, and cash for the ruins. ## Practical notes Fly to Dalaman for the western half of the coast and Antalya for the eastern half. A rental car is the best way to string the sites together; the coast road is slow but never far from the sea. The Lycian Way, a waymarked trail of 540 km, links most of the places on this sheet for walkers. The kitchen here is fish, meze and citrus; see [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/). Lycia is one stop on a longer route, and the chronology that makes its tombs and theaters legible is on the [history sheet](/history/). From Antalya the road north climbs to [Konya and Pamukkale](/anatolia/), and the flight to [Istanbul](/istanbul/) takes 75 minutes. ## Questions **What is the Blue Voyage?** A multi-day cruise along the Turkish Mediterranean on a gulet, a broad wooden motor-sailer built in Bodrum and Fethiye. Boats carry 6 to 16 guests, anchor in a different bay each night, and the crew cooks. **How many days should a gulet trip last?** Four days is the minimum that feels like a voyage. A week lets you sail Fethiye to Kekova and back without rushing, with time ashore at Myra and Kaş. **When is the sailing season?** May to late October. June and September have the best balance of warm sea, empty bays and calm afternoons. July and August are hot and busy. **Can I walk the Lycian Way instead?** Yes. The marked trail runs 540 km from Fethiye to Antalya and takes about a month in full, but most people walk one or two sections of three to five days in spring or autumn. **Is Xanthos worth the detour?** Yes. It is the Lycian capital, a UNESCO site since 1988, and the pillar tombs and theater sit in a landscape that has hardly changed. Combine it with Letoon, 4 km away. --- # Ephesus, Troy & the Aegean URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/ephesus/ Summary: Turkey's Aegean coast in one sheet: how to walk Ephesus, what Troy's nine cities look like, Pergamon's acropolis and Bodrum's castle, with distances and timing. - Position: 37.94° N, 27.34° E - UNESCO: Ephesus 2015 · Troy 1998 - Airport: İzmir, 60 km - Ephesus visit: 3 hours, morning - Best months: April to June, Sept to Oct - Time needed: 3 to 5 days ## Ephesus in three hours Ephesus was the largest city in Roman Asia, a port of perhaps 200,000 people at its peak in the second century. The harbor silted up long ago, which is why the marble streets now end in a field 5 km from the sea. The same silt buried and preserved the city. Enter at the upper gate and walk downhill. The first stretch is the state district: the odeion, a small covered theater for the council, the prytaneion where the city's sacred fire burned, and the temple of Domitian. Curetes Street then drops toward the library between columns, fountains and the small temple of Hadrian, built in 138 with its curved arch. ### The Terrace Houses Opposite the temple of Hadrian, a modern roof covers seven houses of wealthy Ephesians built under Augustus and lived in until the seventh century. Their floors are mosaic, their walls are painted, and one dining room still shows its marble panels. The extra ticket is the best money you will spend on this coast. ### The library and the theater The Library of Celsus was built in 135 by Gaius Julius Aquila as a tomb and monument for his father, the governor of Asia. Its two-story facade, with statues of Wisdom, Knowledge, Intelligence and Virtue in the niches, was reassembled from fallen fragments between 1970 and 1978. Behind it, the commercial agora fills a square of 110 m a side. The theater seats 25,000 and is the place where, according to Acts 19, a silversmiths' riot shouted down St. Paul for two hours. From its top row the Arcadian Way runs straight toward the vanished harbor, 500 m of colonnaded street lit at night by lamps in the fourth century. ## Around Ephesus Selçuk, the town 3 km away, holds the rest. The Ephesus Museum has the two statues of Artemis found in the prytaneion, the marble goddess with rows of eggs on her chest. The Temple of Artemis itself, one of the Seven Wonders, is a single re-erected column in a marsh; it was four times the size of the Parthenon. On the hill above stands the Basilica of St. John, built in the sixth century over the apostle's tomb by Justinian, [the emperor of Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/), and beside it the İsa Bey mosque of 1375, a work of the [beylik period](/history/). The House of the Virgin Mary, 7 km up Bülbül mountain, is a small stone chapel that both Catholic and Muslim pilgrims visit. Şirince, an old Greek wine village 8 km east, is the place to sleep and eat. > **Note:** Ephesus is on every cruise-ship itinerary out of Kuşadası. Arrive at the upper gate at 8 a.m. or after 3 p.m.; between 10 and 2 the streets are full. ## Troy Hisarlık is a low mound 30 km south of Çanakkale, and it is the Troy of Homer. Nine cities stand on top of one another here, from Troy I of around 3000 BC to a Roman town abandoned around AD 500. The sloping stone walls that survive best belong to Troy VI, the prosperous Bronze Age city of 1800 to 1275 BC. The layer archaeologists tie to the Trojan War is VIIa, destroyed by fire around 1180 BC. Heinrich Schliemann dug through it in 1870, looking for Priam's city, and found a gold hoard in Troy II a thousand years too early. His trench still cuts the mound. A marked path circles the site in an hour with clear panels at each layer. The Troy Museum at the entrance, opened in 2018, holds the finds and explains the stratigraphy better than the mound can. The UNESCO listing dates from 1998, and Gallipoli's battlefields are an hour away across the strait, which makes Çanakkale a two-night stop. ## Pergamon Bergama, 105 km north of İzmir, sits below one of the great cities of the Hellenistic world. After 301 BC, Philetairos turned a treasury of 9,000 talents into a kingdom, and his successors, Eumenes I, Attalos I and Eumenes II, spent it on an acropolis modeled on Athens. The library held 200,000 scrolls and gave its name to parchment. In 133 BC, Attalos III left the whole kingdom to Rome in his will. A cable car climbs to the acropolis. The theater is the steepest of antiquity, 80 rows dropping toward the plain, and the foundations of the Great Altar are beside it; the altar itself has stood in Berlin since 1886. Below the town, the Asklepieion was a healing sanctuary where Galen trained, with a sacred spring and a tunnel for sleeping cures. ## İzmir and Bodrum İzmir was Smyrna, founded around 1000 BC, sacked by Alyattes of Lydia in 600 BC and refounded by Alexander's generals on the slopes of Kadifekale after 334. Today it is Turkey's third city, with a long waterfront, the Kemeraltı bazaar with its old coffeehouses and [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/) counters, and the Roman agora in the center. It is a good hub: Ephesus is 75 minutes south and Pergamon 90 minutes north. Bodrum was Halicarnassus, home of Herodotus and of Mausolus, whose tomb of 353 BC was so large it named every mausoleum since. Stones from it went into the Castle of St. Peter, which the Knights of Rhodes built after 1402. Süleyman the Magnificent took the castle in 1523, a year after Rhodes, and the coast answered to [Topkapı](/topkapi-palace/) for the next four centuries. The castle now houses the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, the best of its kind. The town is also where the gulets of the [Blue Voyage](/lycia/) are built. ## Practical notes Fly to İzmir and rent a car, or use the trains and buses from the city: Selçuk is on the line, and Bergama has an hourly bus. Pamukkale and its travertines, 190 km inland, are the usual next stop and belong to the [Anatolia sheet](/anatolia/). Allow three days for Ephesus and Pergamon, five if you add Troy and Bodrum. South of Bodrum the shore turns Lycian, and that stretch has its own sheet: [Lycia and the Turquoise Coast](/lycia/). The cities on this coast were Greek before they were Roman and Byzantine before they were Turkish; the [history of Anatolia](/history/) puts the layers in order. The Aegean kitchen of olive oil, wild greens and grilled fish is the lightest in the country, covered in [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/). From İzmir, [Istanbul](/istanbul/) is an hour by air, and the fast road to [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) runs through Pamukkale and Konya. ## Questions **How long does Ephesus take?** About three hours for the main site with the Terrace Houses. Add an hour for the museum in Selçuk and thirty minutes for the Basilica of St. John. Start at the upper gate and walk downhill. **Which entrance should I use at Ephesus?** The upper (Magnesia) gate. From there the route runs downhill past the state agora and along Curetes Street to the library and the theater, which is the natural order. **Is Troy worth visiting?** Yes, if you go with the right expectations. The site is nine cities stacked on one mound, marked and explained, and the museum opened in 2018 is excellent. There is no dramatic ruin, but there is 3,500 years of history in one hill. **Can I see Ephesus as a day trip from Istanbul?** Only by flying to İzmir on the first departure and back on the last. It is a long day; an overnight in Selçuk or Şirince is far better. **What is the best base for the Aegean sites?** Selçuk for Ephesus, Bergama for Pergamon, Çanakkale for Troy and Gallipoli. İzmir works as a hub if you prefer a city, with all three within two hours. --- # Konya, Pamukkale & Inner Anatolia URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/anatolia/ Summary: Mevlana's tomb and the whirling dervishes in Konya, Pamukkale's white terraces and Hierapolis, Ottoman Bursa, İznik tiles and Akdamar on Lake Van. - Konya position: 37.87° N, 32.49° E - Konya elevation: 1,020 m - UNESCO: Pamukkale 1988 · Bursa 2014 - Şeb-i Arus: December 17, Konya - Best months: Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct - Time needed: 4–6 days for all five ## Why go inland The coast has the beaches and the marble cities. The interior has the buildings that explain how modern Turkey came to be: the Seljuk capital at Konya, the first two Ottoman capitals at İznik and Bursa, and a Roman spa town balanced on a cliff of white limestone at Pamukkale. None of these is a full week's trip on its own. Together they make a loop that fits between [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) and the Aegean, and each adds a chapter that the coast skips. If the chronology is new to you, read [A Short History of Anatolia](/history/) first. ## Konya and the Mevlana Museum Konya is the city of Jalaluddin Rumi, called Mevlana in Turkey. He was born in Balkh in present-day Afghanistan around 1207, arrived in Konya with his family in the 1220s, and died here on December 17, 1273. His tomb, under a fluted turquoise dome built in 1397, is the most visited building in central Anatolia. The complex around the tomb was the mother lodge of the Mevlevi order until Turkey closed the dervish lodges in 1925. It reopened as a museum in 1926. Inside you will see the sarcophagi of Mevlana and his father, illuminated manuscripts of the Mesnevi, the cells where dervishes lived, and the kitchen where new recruits served a 1,001-day novitiate. Entry is free. Come early, before the tour groups from Cappadocia arrive around 11 am, and give yourself an hour. Women should bring a headscarf, since the tomb chamber is treated as a place of prayer. ### The sema The whirling ceremony is a structured rite, not a dance. The dervish's tall felt hat stands for his tombstone, the black cloak for his grave, and the white robe for his shroud. When the cloaks come off, the whirling begins, right palm turned up to receive, left palm turned down to give. The Mevlana Cultural Center on the edge of town holds a public sema on Saturday evenings for most of the year. The largest gathering is the week ending December 17, called Şeb-i Arus, the wedding night, because Mevlana described death as a reunion with God. ### Seljuk Konya Konya was the [Seljuk capital](/history/) from 1097, and the buildings from that century and the next are the reason to stay a second day. The Alaeddin Mosque on the citadel mound was finished in 1221 and keeps a carved wooden minbar from that date. The Karatay Madrasa of 1252 is now a tile museum, and its dome interior is one of the finest Seljuk ceramic surfaces anywhere. The İnce Minareli Madrasa of 1264 has a stone portal so densely carved that it looks knotted. Between the two madrasas, the old bazaar streets sell etli ekmek, Konya's thin flatbread with minced lamb, which is worth a lunch stop before the drive on. ## Pamukkale and Hierapolis Pamukkale means cotton castle. Calcium-rich hot springs have been spilling over a 160 m cliff for thousands of years, depositing white travertine in shallow terraced pools. The terraces and the Roman city above them were listed by UNESCO together in 1988. The site has one rule that surprises people: you walk the terraces barefoot, carrying your shoes, to protect the surface. The water is warm, the limestone is not slippery, and the walk up from the lower gate takes about 25 minutes. Hierapolis was founded as a spa town in the second century BC and rebuilt several times after earthquakes, including a large one under Nero in AD 60. The theater, restored in the 2010s, is the best-preserved building. Walk the colonnaded main street to the Frontinus Gate, then out to the necropolis, where more than 1,200 tombs line the road because the sick who came here often did not leave. The Antique Pool lets you swim over fallen marble columns in 36°C spring water for a separate fee. The small museum in the Roman baths holds sarcophagi and a fine set of statues from the theater's stage building. Arrive after 3 pm for softer light and thinner crowds, and stay the night in Pamukkale village rather than in Denizli. ## Bursa, the first Ottoman city The Ottomans took Bursa from the Byzantines in 1326 and made it their capital in 1335. The buildings from the next century show the dynasty finding its style before it reached [Istanbul](/istanbul/). Bursa and the nearby village of Cumalıkızık joined the UNESCO list in 2014. Start at the Green Complex in the Yeşil district. The Green Mosque was begun for Çelebi Mehmed in 1419, and the Green Tomb opposite, finished in 1424, is covered inside and out with turquoise tiles from İznik. Then walk down to the Grand Mosque, built between 1396 and 1400, with 20 domes on 12 piers and a fountain in the middle of the prayer hall. The Muradiye complex on the western side of town holds 12 tombs of early Ottoman princes and sultanas in a quiet garden. Bursa is also where İskender kebab was invented in 1867, thin-sliced lamb over bread with tomato sauce and browned butter, still served by the founder's descendants near the covered market. There is more on that in the guide to [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/). Bursa's other specialty is kestane şekeri, candied chestnut, sold in the same shops as [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/). ## İznik, tiles and church councils İznik was Nicaea, the city where bishops assembled in 325 to settle the Nicene Creed and again in 787 to end the first iconoclast period. It later served as the Byzantine capital-in-exile after the Fourth Crusade took [Constantinople](/istanbul/) in 1204, and it became the first Ottoman capital in 1331. The Roman and Byzantine walls, about 5 km around with four gates, still enclose the town. Inside, the Hagia Sophia of İznik, a modest cousin of [the one in Istanbul](/hagia-sophia/), is the church that hosted the 787 council, and the Green Mosque of 1378 to 1391 has a minaret sheathed in glazed brick. The tile workshops that supplied Bursa, the mosques of Istanbul and [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/) in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries stood along the lakeshore. Several potteries have revived the craft using the old quartz-rich clay, and this is the one place to buy tiles made the historical way. İznik is 80 km from Bursa and makes an easy half-day trip. ## Van and Akdamar Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey, at 1,640 m above sea level and saltier than any sea. On a small island near its southern shore stands the Church of the Holy Cross, built between 915 and 921 for the Armenian king Gagik I of Vaspurakan. The outside walls carry the church's fame: carved reliefs of David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, vines, animals and the king holding a model of his church. It was restored in 2007 and reopened as a museum. Boats leave from a jetty 45 km southwest of Van city whenever a dozen passengers gather. Van itself has the Urartian fortress rock, where kings ruled from the ninth century BC, and a museum with the best Urartian bronzes in the country. Try [Van breakfast](/turkish-cuisine/) in the old town, a spread of herbed cheese, honey, clotted cream and kavut that has become a national brand. ## Planning the loop Konya sits 230 km from [Göreme](/cappadocia/) on a good road, so it fits after Cappadocia. From Konya, the old Seljuk road south reaches Alanya and the [Lycian coast](/lycia/) in a day. Pamukkale is another 410 km west and pairs with [Ephesus](/ephesus/) the next day. Bursa and İznik work best as a two-day loop from Istanbul by ferry to Mudanya. Van is the outlier, more than 1,000 km east, and needs a flight. Give it two nights if you go. For all five places, April to June and September to October bring mild days, and Konya can be very cold from December through February. > **Note:** Konya is a conservative city and the Mevlana Museum is a functioning place of prayer for many visitors. Cover shoulders and knees, keep voices low, and skip photography inside the tomb chamber. ## Questions **Can I see the whirling dervishes in Konya?** Yes. The Mevlana Cultural Center holds a public sema most Saturday evenings, and the week around December 17 draws large crowds for the Şeb-i Arus commemorations. Book accommodation early for December. **Is Pamukkale worth visiting if I only have half a day?** Yes, if you arrive after 3 pm. The terraces and the Hierapolis theater take about three hours, the light is better late, and the tour buses have gone. **Can you swim at Pamukkale?** You can wade barefoot in the travertine pools that are open, and swim among fallen columns in the Antique Pool for a separate fee. Shoes are not allowed on the terraces. **How do I get from Istanbul to Bursa?** The fastest route is the ferry from Yenikapı or Eminönü to Mudanya, about two hours, then a 30-minute bus into Bursa. Driving over the Osmangazi Bridge takes about two and a half hours. **Is Van safe and easy to reach?** Van has daily flights from Istanbul and Ankara, and Akdamar is a 45-minute drive plus a short boat ride from the city. Check current travel advice before booking, as it sits close to the Iranian border. --- # A Short History of Anatolia URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/history/ Summary: Anatolia's history in eight eras, from the Hittite capital at Hattusa to the Republic of 1923, with the sites where each period can still be seen today. - Hattusa founded: c. 1650 BC - Croesus of Lydia: c. 560–546 BC - Constantinople: May 11, 330 - Manzikert: August 26, 1071 - Fall of the City: May 29, 1453 - Republic: October 29, 1923 ## Why a timeline helps Every site in Turkey sits on top of an older one. [Ephesus](/ephesus/) has a Bronze Age hill, a Greek city, a Roman capital and a Byzantine basilica within a 3 km walk. [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) was a church for 916 years and a mosque for most of the rest. The eight eras below run in order, with the dates you need and one place where each can still be seen. Read it once and the labels on museum cases stop being noise. ## The Hittites, about 1650 to 1180 BC The Hittites built the first state to rule most of the peninsula. Their capital, Hattusa, stood on a rocky slope 200 km east of Ankara, with 6 km of walls, five gates and a great temple. The archives found there in 1906 held some 30,000 clay tablets in cuneiform, the oldest written Indo-European language known. The empire fought Egypt to a draw at Kadesh in 1274 BC and then signed the earliest surviving peace treaty. A copy hangs at the United Nations in New York. Around 1180 BC the capital burned and the state collapsed, part of the wider Bronze Age breakdown that also ended Troy, which you can read about on the [Ephesus and Troy](/ephesus/) sheet. Where to see it: Hattusa and the nearby open-air sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, plus the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. ## Phrygians and Lydians, 800 to 546 BC Two smaller kingdoms filled the gap. The Phrygians, with their capital at Gordion west of Ankara, are remembered for King Midas, who was a real ruler around 720 BC, and for the knot Alexander later cut. Their burial mounds still rise from the plain, and one holds the oldest standing wooden building in the world. The Lydians ruled the west from Sardis, near İzmir, and around 600 BC issued the first coins stamped with a guaranteed weight. Their last king, Croesus, gave his name to wealth. He misread an oracle, attacked Persia in 546 BC, and lost his kingdom. Where to see it: Gordion, 95 km southwest of Ankara, and Sardis, 90 km east of İzmir. ## Greeks and Persians, 546 to 133 BC Greek colonies had dotted the Aegean coast since the eleventh century BC, and Miletus, Ephesus and Halicarnassus were among the richest cities in the Greek world. Persia ruled them from 546 BC, and their revolt in 499 BC drew Athens into the wars that followed. Alexander crossed the Hellespont in 334 BC, won his first battle at the Granicus, and freed the coast on his way east. After his death his generals divided the land, and the Attalid kings of Pergamon turned their hilltop into a second Athens with a library of 200,000 scrolls. The last Attalid left his kingdom to Rome in his will in 133 BC. Where to see it: the theater and Temple of Athena at Pergamon, the Lycian tombs described on the [Lycia](/lycia/) sheet, and the Alexander Sarcophagus in Istanbul. ## Rome, 133 BC to AD 330 Rome organized the west as the province of Asia, with Ephesus as its capital and its second-largest city after Rome itself. The Pax Romana of the first two centuries AD paid for the marble streets, aqueducts and theaters that fill the coast today. Paul of Tarsus preached in these cities, and the seven churches of Revelation are all in western Anatolia. Earthquakes and Gothic raids in the third century weakened the region. In 324 Constantine won the civil war that made him sole emperor, and on May 11, 330, he dedicated a new capital at Byzantion on the Bosphorus, renamed Constantinople. Where to see it: Ephesus, [the theater at Aspendos near Antalya](/lycia/), Hierapolis above Pamukkale on the [Inner Anatolia](/anatolia/) sheet. ## Byzantium, 330 to 1453 The Eastern Roman Empire outlived the Western one by a thousand years, and its capital was the largest city in Europe for most of that time. Justinian rebuilt [the church of Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) between 532 and 537 after a riot burned the old church. The dome fell in 558 and rose again, higher, by 562. Arab sieges in the seventh and eighth centuries pushed Christians into refuges like the rock valleys of [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/). The iconoclast crisis banned religious images from 726 to 843. After the Turkish victory at Manzikert in 1071 the empire lost the interior, and the Fourth Crusade sacked the capital in 1204. A reduced state fought on until May 29, 1453. Where to see it: Hagia Sophia, the land walls and Chora Church in [Istanbul](/istanbul/), the [painted churches of Göreme](/cappadocia/). ## The Seljuks, 1071 to about 1300 The Seljuk Turks came out of Central Asia, converted to Islam, and defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert near Lake Van on August 26, 1071. Within a generation they held central Anatolia and set up their capital at [Konya](/anatolia/) in 1097. Their sultanate of Rum built madrasas, caravanserais and mosques with a taste for carved stone portals and turquoise tile. The Mongols broke Seljuk power at Köse Dağ in 1243, and the state dissolved into small principalities, the beyliks, by 1300. One of those beyliks, in the northwest, belonged to a man named Osman. Where to see it: Konya's Alaeddin Mosque and Karatay Madrasa, the Sultanhanı caravanserai on the Konya road, Divriği in the east. ## The Ottomans, 1299 to 1922 Osman's principality dates its founding to 1299. His son took Bursa in 1326, and the dynasty made it the first capital, then Edirne, then Constantinople after Mehmed II broke the walls in 1453. Under Süleyman, who ruled from 1520 to 1566, the empire ran from Budapest to Baghdad and the architect Sinan gave the capital its skyline. The court's kitchens shaped what the country eats. [Baklava](/baklava/) took its layered form at Topkapı, and the confectioner Hacı Bekir opened the Istanbul shop that made [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/) famous in 1777. The long decline was slower than the textbooks suggest. Reforms in the nineteenth century built railways, schools and the Dolmabahçe Palace. Defeat in the First World War, followed by the occupation of Istanbul and a Greek landing at İzmir, brought the end. The Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate on November 1, 1922. Where to see it: [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/), Süleymaniye, the Green Tomb in Bursa, and the Ottoman kitchen that survives in [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/). ## The Republic, 1923 to today Mustafa Kemal, later given the surname Atatürk, led the war of independence from Ankara and proclaimed the Republic on October 29, 1923. The new state made Ankara the capital, adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928, gave women the vote in 1934, and turned Hagia Sophia into a museum the same year. For a visitor, the Republic's most useful legacy is the museum system, which took the finds from a century of foreign excavations and kept them in the country. Almost every site on this chart has a small local museum built after 1923, and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara, opened in 1968, is the place to see the whole timeline in a single afternoon. > **Note:** Dates before about 700 BC are approximate and sometimes revised by new excavations. Where sources disagree we give the date most museums use on their labels. ## Questions **Why is the region called Anatolia?** The name comes from the Greek anatole, meaning sunrise or east, because the peninsula lay east of Greece. The Turkish form, Anadolu, is the everyday word for the Asian part of the country. **Where can I see the Hittites?** Hattusa, near the village of Boğazkale 200 km east of Ankara, is the capital city with its walls, gates and temples. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara holds the best finds, including the tablets and reliefs. **What is the difference between Byzantine and Eastern Roman?** Nothing. The people of Constantinople called themselves Romans until 1453. Byzantine is a label historians adopted in the sixteenth century, taken from the city's older name, Byzantion. **How long did the Ottoman Empire last?** About 620 years, from the founding of the principality in 1299 to the abolition of the sultanate on November 1, 1922. The Republic followed on October 29, 1923. **Which single museum covers all of this?** The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara for everything before Rome, and the Istanbul Archaeology Museums for the Greek, Roman and Byzantine centuries. --- # Turkish Cuisine URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/turkish-cuisine/ Summary: How the Turkish table works, region by region: meze and rakı, Adana and Urfa kebab, pide, the long breakfast, and how coffee and tea are brewed and served. - Food capital: Gaziantep - UNESCO listings: Coffee 2013 · Tea 2022 - Kebab origin: Adana, Urfa, Antep - Breakfast: Van, up to 30 plates - Tea region: Rize, Black Sea - Coffee house since: Istanbul, 1554 ## A country that eats by region Turkey has no single national dish because it has no single kitchen. The country stretches 1,600 km from the Aegean to the Iranian border, and the food changes with the climate and the neighbors. What a family in İzmir eats on a Tuesday would look foreign on a table in Gaziantep. The [Aegean coast](/ephesus/) cooks with olive oil, wild greens and lemon. The Black Sea lives on anchovies, corn bread and butter, with hazelnuts in everything. The Southeast, centered on Gaziantep, Adana and Urfa, is the land of kebab, red pepper and pistachio. [Central Anatolia](/anatolia/), the old Seljuk heartland, works in dough: mantı, börek and flatbreads baked in a tandır oven. Istanbul sits on top of all of it. Ottoman palace cooking, described in the kitchens of [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/), pulled recipes from every province and refined them for the sultan's table. That palace tradition, plus a century of migration into the city, is why you can eat the whole country without leaving [Istanbul](/istanbul/). ## Meze and the rakı table An evening meal in a meyhane, a tavern, begins with meze. The waiter brings a tray of small cold plates, and you pick six or eight for the table. Standard choices include white cheese with melon, haydari (thick yogurt with garlic and herbs), fava bean purée, stuffed vine leaves, smoked eggplant salad and pickled sea bass. Warm meze arrive next: fried calamari, liver cubes from Albania by way of Edirne, and stuffed mussels sold by the piece. Then the fish, grilled whole and priced by weight. The whole sequence is designed around rakı, the anise spirit that turns cloudy with water and is meant to be sipped over three hours, not drunk. The same table, set with the morning's catch, runs the length of the [Lycian coast](/lycia/) from Fethiye to Antalya, where the meyhane moves outdoors and the fish costs less. > **Note:** Order meze in two rounds rather than all at once. Cold plates first, warm plates when the first round is half gone. Ordering everything together is the mark of a tourist, and the fish will arrive before you are ready for it. ## Kebab, and which kebab "Kebab" in Turkey means meat cooked over charcoal, and there are dozens of named types. Adana kebab is hand-minced lamb with tail fat and red pepper flakes, pressed onto a wide flat skewer. Urfa kebab is the same idea without the heat. Antep, meaning Gaziantep, adds pistachio, eggplant or garlic to the skewer depending on the season. İskender kebab comes from [Bursa](/anatolia/): sliced döner over cubes of pide bread, doused with tomato sauce and browned butter, with yogurt on the side. Şiş kebab is cubed meat on a skewer. Döner, the rotating spit, is a nineteenth-century invention from Bursa that became a global street food. Cağ kebab from Erzurum is döner turned sideways and carved with a horizontal skewer. The best kebab restaurants, called ocakbaşı, seat you around the grill so you can watch. Bread arrives from the same charcoal, along with grilled pepper, tomato and a plate of raw onion with sumac. Ayran, salted yogurt drink, is the standard accompaniment. Köfte, grilled patties of minced lamb and beef, is the everyday cousin of kebab, and the oldest köfte houses in the country stand on Divanyolu, a short walk from [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/). ## Bread from the oven: pide and lahmacun Pide is a boat-shaped flatbread baked in a wood oven with cheese, minced meat or pastrami and egg. It is the Turkish answer to pizza and predates it in the region by centuries. The Black Sea version is long and narrow with a thick edge; the Konya version is thin and almost a meter long. Lahmacun is thinner still: a round of dough spread with minced lamb, tomato, onion and parsley, baked in under two minutes. It is eaten rolled around fresh parsley with a squeeze of lemon, usually standing up. In Gaziantep and Urfa a single lahmacun costs less than a cup of coffee, and lunch is three of them. ## Breakfast, the long meal Kahvaltı, the Turkish word for breakfast, means "before coffee." It is the meal Turks are most proud of and the one visitors most often miss by ordering eggs at the hotel. A proper breakfast is a table of small plates: two or three cheeses, green and black olives, tomatoes, cucumber, honey with kaymak (clotted cream), jams, a fried egg dish called menemen, and warm bread or simit. The city of Van in the east claims the biggest version, with its own breakfast street and plates running past thirty. Weekend breakfasts anywhere in the country run two hours and end with the tea still coming. Tea is not optional at breakfast; it is refilled until you turn the glass on its side. ## Soups, vegetables and the olive-oil kitchen Turks eat soup at every meal, including breakfast. Lentil soup is the daily default, and tripe soup, işkembe, is the traditional end to a night of rakı, served with garlic vinegar. In winter, tarhana, a dried fermented yogurt-and-flour mix, is reconstituted into a sour soup that every grandmother makes differently. Vegetables cooked in olive oil, zeytinyağlı, are served at room temperature and are the quiet center of home cooking. Green beans, artichokes, leeks, stuffed peppers and imam bayıldı, a whole eggplant stuffed with onion and tomato, all belong to this group. They are the reason Turkish cuisine is far more vegetable-heavy than the kebab reputation suggests. ## Sweets and the end of the meal Turkish desserts divide into sherbet sweets, milk puddings and fruit. The sherbet group is led by [baklava](/baklava/), layers of paper-thin dough with nuts and syrup, and includes künefe, a hot cheese pastry from Hatay. Milk puddings include sütlaç (baked rice pudding), kazandibi (caramelized bottom pudding) and tavuk göğsü, a pudding made with shredded chicken breast that tastes of nothing but milk and sugar. [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/), lokum, is not a dessert in the restaurant sense. It is offered with coffee, brought as a gift, and eaten a piece at a time. Fruit, especially melon and grapes in summer, ends most family meals at home. ## Turkish coffee and tea Coffee reached Istanbul from Yemen in the sixteenth century, and the city's first coffee houses opened in Tahtakale around 1554. Within a century, according to the traveler Evliya Çelebi, there were dozens, and the coffee house had become the male public square. The [Ottoman army](/history/) left sacks of coffee behind after the siege of Vienna in 1683, and Europe's coffee habit followed. The method has not changed. Coffee is ground to a powder finer than espresso, put into a small long-handled pot called a cezve with cold water and sugar to taste, and heated slowly. As it rises, the foam is spooned into the cups, then the coffee is poured over it. It is served in small cups with a glass of water and often a piece of [lokum](/turkish-delight/). The grounds settle at the bottom and are not drunk. UNESCO added Turkish coffee culture to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2013. The oldest name in the trade is Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi, roasting beside the Spice Bazaar since 1871. Sugar is decided before brewing: sade (none), az şekerli (a little), orta (medium) or şekerli (sweet). Afterward the cup is turned upside down to cool, and someone at the table reads the patterns in the grounds. ### Tea, the daily drink Despite the coffee history, the drink Turks actually consume all day is black tea. It grows on the steep, wet hills around Rize on the Black Sea, where plantations were established only in the 1930s and now cover the province. Turkey drinks more tea per person than any country in the world. Tea is brewed in a çaydanlık, a two-tier kettle: strong concentrate in the small top pot, boiling water below. Each glass is mixed to taste, dark (koyu) or light (açık), and served in a small tulip-shaped glass that shows the color. Sugar cubes go in the glass, never milk. Tea is offered in every shop, office and home, and refusing it is harder than accepting it. ## Where to start Eat breakfast once in a proper kahvaltı place, ideally on a weekend. Eat one [Istanbul meyhane](/istanbul/) dinner and one ocakbaşı kebab dinner, preferably in the Southeast if you travel there. Have Turkish coffee after lunch and tea at every other hour, and let the rest of the map, from the [Aegean](/ephesus/) to the Black Sea, fill in over the [history](/history/) of the places you visit. ## Questions **What is the most famous Turkish food?** Kebab is the dish foreigners know, but inside Turkey the honest answer is breakfast, meze and the vegetable dishes cooked in olive oil. Baklava is the country's signature sweet. **What is a meze?** A meze is a small cold or warm plate served before the main course, usually with rakı. A typical table starts with six to twelve of them, from white cheese and melon to stuffed mussels and fried liver. **How is Turkish coffee different from espresso?** Turkish coffee is ground to a powder, simmered with water and sugar in a small pot called a cezve, and served unfiltered with its grounds settling in the cup. It is never pressed or filtered, and the foam on top is part of the serving. **Is Turkish food spicy?** Mostly no. The Southeast around Gaziantep, Adana and Urfa uses red pepper freely, but Aegean, Marmara and Black Sea cooking is mild and built on olive oil, herbs and butter. **What do Turks eat for breakfast?** Bread, several cheeses, olives, tomato and cucumber, eggs, honey with clotted cream, jams and a great deal of tea. Weekend village breakfasts can run to thirty plates and last two hours. **Do people really read fortunes in Turkish coffee grounds?** Yes, informally and for fun. After drinking, the cup is turned upside down on the saucer to cool, and the patterns left by the grounds are read by whoever at the table claims the skill. --- # Baklava URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/baklava/ Summary: Baklava from the Topkapı kitchens to Gaziantep: how forty layers of dough are made, the pistachio that defines it, the main types, and how to spot a good piece. - Capital: Gaziantep - EU protected name: Antep Baklavası, 2013 - Layers: 40, sometimes more - Key nut: Antep pistachio - Palace record: Baklava Alayı, 1600s - Best season: Sep–Oct, new pistachio ## What baklava is Baklava is a pastry of many layers of paper-thin dough, brushed with clarified butter, filled with chopped nuts and baked until gold, then soaked in sugar syrup. A good piece has a shatter to it. The layers stay separate, the nut filling is bright and the syrup has gone into the dough rather than pooled underneath it. In Turkey the reference version is fıstıklı baklava, made with green pistachio from Gaziantep. Walnut baklava is the norm in the north and across [inner Anatolia](/anatolia/), and it is cheaper. Everything else, from şöbiyet to sarı burma, is a variation on the same three ingredients: dough, butter and nut. ## From the palace kitchens to the street Layered dough pastries have a long history across Central Asia, Persia and the [Byzantine world](/history/), and the argument over who invented baklava will not be settled here. What is documented is that the dish took its modern form in the kitchens of [Topkapı Palace](/topkapi-palace/) in Istanbul during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Palace cooks competed to roll the dough thinner and stack it higher. The clearest record is the Baklava Alayı, the Baklava Procession. On the fifteenth day of Ramadan, from the seventeenth century onward, the sultan sent trays of baklava to the Janissary barracks. Each unit carried its tray back through the streets in a formal parade, and a refused tray was read as a sign of unrest. The pastry was already a political object, as the [Ottoman chapter](/history/) of Anatolian history makes clear. Baklava left the palace as bakers trained there opened shops in the city. By the nineteenth century, sweet shops in [Istanbul](/istanbul/) sold it by weight, and the trade spread to every provincial capital. The Gaziantep bakers, who had the best pistachios on their doorstep, took the lead in the twentieth century. ## Gaziantep and its pistachio Gaziantep, usually called Antep, sits in the Southeast near the Syrian border and is the food capital of the country, the place where [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/) is loudest about itself. The city has a documented baklava trade going back to the 1870s and today has hundreds of shops. In 2013 the European Union registered Antep Baklavası as a protected geographical indication, the first Turkish product to receive it. The reason is the nut. Antep fıstığı, the Gaziantep pistachio, is smaller than the Iranian or Californian variety, with a darker green kernel and more oil. It is harvested in August and September before the shell splits, which keeps the color. Baklava made in early autumn with the new crop is the version locals wait for. The green is almost luminous, and the difference from a tray made in spring with last year's nuts is visible from across the shop. Bakers in Gaziantep also insist on clarified sheep's-milk butter from the surrounding plateau and on flour milled from local hard wheat. Whether every claim is measurable or not, Antep baklava tastes different: more nut, less sugar, a cleaner butter finish. ## How it is made The dough, yufka, is flour, water, egg and a little salt, rested and then rolled. A skilled usta rolls a fist of dough into a sheet more than a meter across using an oklava, a thin wooden rod, dusting with starch so the layers do not stick. The sheet is thin enough to read a newspaper through it. Forty sheets is the standard for a tray, and some shops go higher. Half the sheets go into the tray, each brushed with butter. The nut layer follows, then the remaining sheets. The tray is cut into squares, diamonds or fingers before baking so the butter reaches every layer. It bakes for around 40 minutes until the top is an even gold. The syrup, sugar, water and a squeeze of lemon, is boiled separately and poured hot over the hot pastry, and the sound it makes is part of the craft. The order matters. Hot syrup on hot baklava keeps the layers crisp. Cold syrup or cold pastry gives you a soggy tray, which is the most common failure in restaurants and most home kitchens. ## The main varieties Fıstıklı baklava, the pistachio classic, is the benchmark and the most expensive. Cevizli, with walnut, is the everyday version and better than its reputation when the walnuts are fresh. Kuru baklava, dry baklava, is made without kaymak, the clotted cream layer some shops add, and is the version that travels. Şöbiyet is a triangle folded around pistachio and thick cream, richer and softer. Sarı burma, "yellow twist," is dough rolled around nuts on the oklava, crinkled and cut into cylinders. Havuç dilimi, "carrot slice," is baklava cut in wedges from a round tray. Midye, "mussel," is a shell-shaped fold. Bülbül yuvası, "nightingale's nest," is a ring of shredded dough with a pistachio center. Each shop lists a dozen or more, but they are all the same dough and butter in different shapes. Taste the plain fıstıklı first; if that is good, everything else in the shop will be. ## How to tell good baklava Look at the cut edge. The layers should be visible and distinct, not fused into a paste. The color should be gold, not dark brown, and the nut layer should be green for pistachio and pale for walnut, never grey. Pick up a piece: it should hold its shape and leave almost no syrup on the plate. Smell it, too. Real butter has a clean, slightly nutty scent, while margarine and vegetable shortening smell of nothing or faintly of oil. Then bite. The top should crackle, the middle should be tender and the sweetness should stop well short of cloying. If it is sticky, wet or tastes mainly of sugar, it was made carelessly or a long time ago. > **Note:** Baklava is sold by the kilo, and a portion in a shop is usually two pieces, about 80 g. Ask for it to be eaten there rather than boxed; shops serve it on a plate with a fork and a glass of water, and it is best within hours of the syrup going on. ## Where to eat it, and who makes it In Istanbul the historic names are [Karaköy Güllüoğlu](https://www.turkishtaste.com/collections/karakoy-gulluoglu), opened in Karaköy in 1949 by a family with Gaziantep roots going back to the 1870s, and [Hafız Mustafa](https://www.turkishtaste.com/collections/hafiz-mustafa), a confectioner founded in 1864 whose branches now line Sultanahmet, a few steps from [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/), and Eminönü. Both are open late and serve at the counter. At Güllüoğlu the order is pistachio baklava or sütlü nuriye, the milk-syrup version the house is known for; at Hafız Mustafa it is the pistachio rolls and the mixed trays that pair baklava with lokum. In Gaziantep the reference is İmam Çağdaş, trading since 1887 in the old bazaar, which also makes the city's other export, lahmacun. Outside those cities, buy from a baklavacı, a shop that makes only sweets, not from a bakery or supermarket. Serve baklava at room temperature with Turkish coffee or tea; the bitterness balances the syrup. It belongs to the sweet end of [the cuisine guide](/turkish-cuisine/), alongside [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/), and like lokum it is the gift most often carried to someone's house. ## Carrying it home Ask for kuru baklava for the suitcase; it keeps for two weeks or more in its metal tin. Syrup baklava should be eaten within four days and kept in the box at room temperature, never in the refrigerator. A kilo box is the usual gift size. Gaziantep's bakers ship overnight within Turkey, and the shops at [Istanbul's airports](/istanbul/) stock the main brands, though the price is higher than in the city. The two Istanbul houses above also sell sealed boxes online, which is the simpler route when the baklava is meant for someone abroad. If your route runs through [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/), [Ephesus](/ephesus/) or the [Lycian coast](/lycia/), buy on the last day rather than the first. ## Questions **Where does baklava come from?** The layered version eaten today was developed in the Ottoman palace kitchens of Istanbul, with earlier layered pastries known in Central Asia, Persia and the Byzantine world. Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, is its modern capital. **Is baklava Turkish or Greek?** Both countries make it, and both claim it. The Ottoman palace tradition is documented in Istanbul from the 1500s, and Turkish baklava is distinguished by sugar syrup rather than honey and by Antep pistachio rather than walnut. **Is baklava gluten-free?** Traditional baklava is not, because the dough is wheat flour. A few large Istanbul makers produce gluten-free and sugar-free versions on request, but assume any baklava you are offered contains wheat. **How long does baklava keep?** Syrup baklava keeps three to five days at room temperature in its box, longer if refrigerated, though the cold dulls the butter. Kuru baklava, the dry version made without milk cream, keeps for weeks and is the one to carry home. **How many calories are in a piece of baklava?** A standard piece of pistachio baklava is roughly 40 g and carries about 150 to 200 calories, most of it butter and sugar. Two pieces with tea is a normal serving. **What is the difference between Turkish and Greek baklava?** Turkish baklava uses a light lemon-sugar syrup poured over the hot pastry and favors pistachio; Greek baklava uses honey syrup, often with cinnamon and clove, and favors walnut. The Turkish version is crisper. --- # Turkish Delight URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/turkish-delight/ Summary: What Turkish delight is, how lokum has been made since Hacı Bekir's 1777 shop, the types from rose to double-roasted pistachio, and how to buy a good box. - Turkish name: Lokum - Oldest maker: Hacı Bekir, 1777 - Base: Sugar + cornstarch - Cooking time: 5–6 hours - Classic flavor: Rose - Served with: Turkish coffee ## What lokum is Lokum is a confection made from sugar, water and cornstarch, cooked slowly until it thickens into a translucent gel, then flavored, set and cut into cubes. The texture is the point: firm enough to hold a square edge, soft enough to give under the teeth, and never sticky. It is dusted with powdered sugar and starch so the pieces do not cling together in the box. The English name, Turkish delight, is a nineteenth-century marketing phrase. In Turkey the word is lokum, from the Arabic rahat al-hulqum, "comfort of the throat." A box of it sits on the counter of every sweet shop in [Istanbul](/istanbul/), and a single piece arrives on the saucer with every cup of [Turkish coffee](/turkish-cuisine/). ## Hacı Bekir and the 1777 shop Sugar confections had been made in [Ottoman kitchens](/topkapi-palace/) for centuries, but they were set with flour and honey and were closer to a paste. The modern recipe belongs to Bekir Efendi, a confectioner from Kastamonu on the Black Sea who opened a shop in the Bahçekapı district of Istanbul in 1777, a few steps from the [Spice Bazaar](/istanbul/). He replaced flour with starch and honey with refined sugar, both newly available, and the result held its shape and kept for weeks. Bekir Efendi made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was known afterward as Hacı Bekir, the name the business still carries. The shop supplied the palace at [Topkapı](/topkapi-palace/) and later Dolmabahçe, and the family firm remains in the same street under the fifth generation. Koska, founded in 1907 in Denizli, the province that holds [Pamukkale](/anatolia/), and now based in Istanbul, is the other large traditional house. It is known for halva as much as for lokum, and its boxes are the ones most often seen in supermarkets abroad. ## How it reached the West British travelers carried boxes of lokum home in the early nineteenth century, and the phrase "Turkish delight" appears in English by the 1860s, usually for rose-flavored cubes wrapped in paper. It became a standard Christmas sweet in Britain, which is why C. S. Lewis could use it, without explanation, as the treat the White Witch offers Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. Most of what was sold abroad was a soft, heavily perfumed rose lokum, and the Western idea of the sweet still leans that way. Inside Turkey, rose is one flavor among many, and the nut-filled varieties are considered the serious ones. ## How it is made The process has changed little since 1777. Sugar and water are boiled with a little citric acid or lemon to keep the sugar from crystallizing. Cornstarch dissolved in water is added, and the mixture is cooked over low heat and stirred without pause for five to six hours until it pulls away from the sides of the pan and turns glassy. Flavoring goes in near the end: rosewater, lemon, orange, mint or mastic, and nuts if the recipe calls for them. The mass is poured into large trays lined with starch and left overnight to set. The next day the slab is turned out onto a bed of powdered sugar and starch and cut into cubes by hand with a long knife. Industrial lokum shortens the cooking and sometimes adds gelatin or glucose syrup for texture, which is why a supermarket cube and a confectioner's cube are different things. The traditional version is set entirely by starch and is naturally vegan. ## The varieties that matter Sade, plain, is the unflavored cube and the honest test of a maker: with nothing to hide behind, the texture and the clean sugar taste have to be right. Rose lokum, güllü, is the classic export flavor and should taste of petals, not perfume. Lemon and orange are the other citrus standards. Fıstıklı, with whole [Antep pistachios](/baklava/), is the version Turks buy for themselves, and çifte kavrulmuş, "double-roasted," is its richer cousin, cooked longer for a deeper color and a chewier bite. Fındıklı uses hazelnuts from the Black Sea. Cevizli uses walnut, often with pomegranate in the eastern provinces. Sultan lokum is a large pistachio cube rolled in coconut or crushed nuts. Fıstıklı sucuk is a log of walnuts or pistachios on a string, dipped repeatedly in the lokum mixture until it looks like a sausage, then sliced. Kaymaklı, with clotted cream folded in, is eaten fresh and does not travel. ## How to buy it Buy from a şekerci, a confectioner, and buy by weight. Ask to taste; every serious shop expects it. A good cube is translucent at the edge, holds a clean corner and springs back slightly when pressed. If it is cloudy, tacky or leaves sugar on your fingers, it has been sitting too long or was never cooked properly. Pre-packed souvenir boxes in the tourist streets around [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) and the Grand Bazaar are often the cheaper industrial kind. Check the label for gelatin and artificial flavors, neither of which belongs in the traditional recipe. A 500 g box of assorted nut lokum is the standard gift, and the historic shops will pack it in a tin that keeps for months. Every region keeps its own sweet beside it: candied chestnuts in [Bursa](/anatolia/), pişmaniye in İzmit, pestil and köme on the Black Sea. > **Note:** Lokum and [baklava](/baklava/) are the two sweets carried to someone's house as a gift. Between the two, lokum is the safer choice for a long journey because it does not need to be eaten within days. ## How it is served At home and in cafés, lokum is served one piece at a time on the saucer beside Turkish coffee, and the pairing is deliberate: the bitterness of the coffee cuts the sugar. It is also offered to guests on arrival, at religious holidays and after funerals, and a box is the standard gift when visiting. It belongs to the sweet end of [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/) but is not a dessert; nobody orders a plate of lokum after dinner. Keep the box closed and at room temperature, never in the refrigerator, which hardens the starch. Eat nut varieties within a few weeks, and rose or plain within a couple of months. Read the wider [history of Anatolia](/history/) for the Ottoman world that produced it. ## Questions **What is Turkish delight?** Turkish delight, called lokum in Turkey, is a soft, chewy confection made by cooking sugar and cornstarch slowly into a gel, flavoring it with rosewater or nuts, setting it in a slab and cutting it into cubes dusted with powdered sugar. **What does Turkish delight taste like?** Sweet, soft and slightly chewy, with a clean flavor that depends on the type: floral for rose, nutty for pistachio or hazelnut, citrus for lemon. Good lokum is not gummy and does not stick to the teeth. **Is Turkish delight the same as the candy in The Chronicles of Narnia?** Yes. The Turkish delight Edmund eats in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is rose lokum, which was a familiar imported sweet in Britain when C. S. Lewis was writing in 1950. **Does Turkish delight contain gelatin?** Traditional lokum does not; the set comes from cornstarch, so it is naturally vegetarian and vegan. Some cheap export versions use gelatin, so check the label if it matters to you. **How long does Turkish delight last?** Unopened, several months at room temperature. Once opened, plain and rose lokum keep for weeks in a closed box; nut varieties are best within two to three weeks before the nuts lose their crunch. **Which Turkish delight should I buy in Istanbul?** Start with the classics: plain rose, double-roasted pistachio (çifte kavrulmuş fıstıklı) and sultan lokum. Buy by weight from a confectioner rather than a pre-boxed souvenir set, and taste before you choose. --- # About Explore Turkey URL: https://www.exploreturkey.com/about/ Summary: Explore Turkey is an independent guide to the country's historic sites and food, written and checked in Istanbul. We sell no tours, hotels or tickets. - Based in: Istanbul - Language: English - Guides: 12 sheets - Sources: Site visits, museums, UNESCO - Advertising: None - Contact: editors@exploreturkey.com ## What this site is Explore Turkey is a guide to the historic places that give the country its shape, and to the food that gets served around them. It is written in English for people planning a first or second visit who want the dates, distances and practical details in one place. The site is organized as twelve sheets, each covering one region or one subject. Nine describe places, from [Istanbul](/istanbul/) to Lake Van. Three cover the kitchen, starting with an introduction to [Turkish cuisine](/turkish-cuisine/) and continuing with the country's two best-known sweets, [baklava](/baklava/) and [Turkish delight](/turkish-delight/). The place sheets begin in Istanbul with [Hagia Sophia](/hagia-sophia/) and Topkapı Palace, then move to Cappadocia, the tombs of [Lycia](/lycia/), the marble streets of [Ephesus](/ephesus/), and the inland loop through Konya, Pamukkale and Bursa. ## Who writes it We are a small editorial team based in Istanbul, publishing under the name Explore Turkey Editors. Between us we have lived in the city for decades, and we travel to the sites we write about rather than describing them from other people's photographs. We are not archaeologists or historians by profession, and we say so. Where a question is contested, we give the date or interpretation that the site's own museum uses and note the disagreement. ## How a sheet is made Each sheet starts with a visit and a list of questions a visitor would actually ask: how long it takes, when the light is good, what the ticket covers, which building matters most. The answers are checked against museum labels, official documentation and published excavation reports, and every date on the [history](/history/) sheet has been traced to at least two sources. A second editor reads every page before it goes online. When ticketing rules, opening hours or restorations change, we update the page and note the change. If you find something wrong, we would like to know. ## What we do not do We sell no tours, hotels or tickets, and we take no commissions on anything mentioned here. There is no advertising on the site and no paid placement in the text. When we name a restaurant, a bakery or a museum, it is because we think it is worth your time. We also do not pretend to cover everything. A place like [Cappadocia](/cappadocia/) could fill a book; our sheet gives you the two days that matter and leaves the rest for a second visit. ## How to reach us Write to editors@exploreturkey.com. Corrections get answered first, followed by questions about planning a trip. We read everything, though we cannot reply to every message, and we do not give individual itinerary advice by email. ## Questions **Do you sell tours or book hotels?** No. We do not sell anything, take commissions or run advertising. Our recommendations are our own. **How do you check your facts?** Every sheet is researched from site visits, museum labels, official documentation and published archaeology, then reviewed by a second editor before it goes online. **How do I report a mistake?** Email editors@exploreturkey.com with the page name and the sentence in question. We correct errors quickly and note significant changes on the page. **Can I use your text or photographs?** Short quotations with a link are fine. For anything longer, or for images, please write to us first.