Crimea Memorial Church

On top of a hill overlooking the Golden Horn, this is a magnificent mosque built by Sinan in the 1550s. It was centrepiece of a large külliye, a religious complex which included madrasas, a public kitchen and a hospital.. The small cemetery east has the mausoleums of Suleiman the Magnificent and of his wife Hurrem Sultan or Roxelana.

Opened in 2012, this museum is unique and a must-see when you are in the Beyoğlu area. It was created by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk alongside a novel of the same name. It tells the love story of the two main characters from the novel, and represents life in Istanbul during the late 1970s to early 1980s, as it exhibits thousands of objects from that era.

Built in the early 5th century as a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew the Apostle, in 766 it was the burial place of Saint Andrew of Crete and was later re-dedicated to him. It was rebuilt in the late 9th century and again in the 13th, then around 1490 converted into a mosque. From the 16th century it was occupied by the Dervishes, when the legend arose that a chain hung to a cypress tree in the courtyard was a truth diviner. The chain was swung between rival witnesses and the one it hit was telling the truth. The cypress stump is still standing.

A historic house museum dedicated to the life of Adam Mickiewicz, renowned Polish poet. This is where he lived while in Turkey from September 1855 to 26 November 1855, when he died of illness.

It was built in 2001 and is the first miniature park in Istanbul (the world's largest miniature park in respect to its model area). The park hosts icons of many cultures and civilizations. Models vary from the Hagia Sophia to Galata Tower, from Safranbolu Houses to the Sumela Monastery in Trabzon, from Qubbat As-Sakhrah to the ruins of Mount Nemrut. In addition, some works that have not survived into the present, such as the Temple of Artemis, the Halicarnassus Mausoleum and Ajyad Castle, were recreated. All former Ottoman Empire in one place.

Turkey was slow to protect its antiquities and to display them properly, but in 1867 Sultan Abdülaziz toured the museums of Paris, London and Vienna and saw what was needed. The main collection is in a grand neo-classical building of 1891, with two annexes for ancient art and Islamic art. Exhibits include Sumerian tablets, pieces of the wall of Babylon, Roman statues, and the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great, which he never lay in.

Museum in a restored building that was the stables for Topkapı Palace. It exhibits various instruments for astronomy, clocks, pumps, weaponry and so on developed in Islamic realms down the centuries, but these are modern repro, and explanations of their context are skimpy. Islamic science and technology preceded that of Europe, as they insist, but they get the tone wrong, as if that was the triumphal culmination rather than the springboard for further advance.

A village with an impressive citadel overlooking the Bosphorus and its mouth into the Black Sea. By land it's accessible only by a hairpinning road through the forest, with few buses. It's best reached by ferry from Eminönü (twice daily) or Sariyer (frequent). In the village, a road is signposted up to the hilltop Yoros citadel (a little more than 1 km, 20 min on foot, free admission). There's a pleasant area with cafés by the ferry pier; the place gets crowded at weekends during summer. Nasty big dogs stalk the citadel area at night. See Istanbul#The_classic_Bosphorus_cruise.

A resort on the Marmara coast. It's the westernmost part of Istanbul, between Çatalca and the province of Tekirdağ. There are some remnants of the Anastasian wall here, the scrappy ruins of a castle, an ancient cistern, the Piri Paşa Mosque, and Uzunköprü the long aqueduct.

Istanbul's former Asia-side railway station nowadays has no trains, but is worth a look. It was built by the Germans in 1908 in a distinctive Teutonic-castle style - to make an impact on travellers from Asia about to step into Europe, and a counterpoint to Sirkeci station (also closed) on the European side which is modelled in Oriental style. It's intended eventually to make this the terminus for the high speed rail network.

Vast underground cistern built by Justinian in 532 to store the city's water, the largest and best-known of the hundreds constructed. It's a cathedral-like space with 336 richly decorated columns. Time was you explored in a little rowing boat, but tourist numbers have soared and water levels have dropped, so now you follow a boardwalk, with lights, piped music and art installations. It's sometimes a film location, and stages concerts. But the crowds rob it of atmosphere and you might prefer to seek out one of the less-visited cisterns.

Among the exhibition of this museum are five thousand pieces from the Ottoman era through WWII, with the most prominent piece possibly being the huge chain that the Byzantines stretched across the mouth of the Golden Horn to keep out the Sultan's navy in 1453 during the siege of Constantinople. In the yard of the museum, the Janissary Band (Mehter Takımı), the world’s oldest military band gives concerts of march music in traditional uniforms each afternoon, at 15:00.

Built circa 1200 as the Eastern Orthodox Theotokos Kyriotissa Church, after the Ottoman conquest it was handed over to the Qalandari, a Sufi sect. In the mid-18th century it was converted to a Sunni mosque, and its mosaics were plastered over. The original appearance was restored in the 1970s.

Started in 1613 by the Ottoman sultan Ahmet I (r. 1603–1617, who also had the Blue Mosque in the Old City built), and extensively renovated by the art-loving Selim III (r. 1789–1807), this sole building, which itself has the distinction of being the only intact structure that dates back to the rule of Ahmet III (r. 1703–1730), set inside a beautiful garden of pools and mature cedar and magnolia trees is the only remaining part of what was once the fourth largest palatial complex in Istanbul, extending all the way to the banks of the Golden Horn (which is now occupied by the derelict buildings of the closed shipyard, which also block part of the view towards the shore). According to the local rumour, its name (which in Turkish means "mirrored poplar") derives from the now absent mirrors gifted by Venice to the palace that were presumably "as tall as the poplars" (aynalar kavak). The highly decorative and colourful interior includes several rooms of original furnitures fit for a sultan, some of which are covered with nacre, and walls embellished with Ottoman poems praising the palace and Selim III. Downstairs is a small museum dedicated to music, which exhibit some of the instruments (violins, ouds, and kamanchehs) and gramophone records owned by Fatma Gevheri Sultana (1904–1980), the granddaughter of Abdülaziz I (r. 1861–1876). While you are outside, also check out the old main entrance (now closed) towards the Golden Horn, topped by a dome. Worth the half hour spent there.

Although not at the size of Hagia Sophia, this is the largest active church in Turkey. It’s directly on Istiklal St, but somewhat hidden from view by its yard portal. Catholic Masses in Italian, Turkish, and English (in different days of the week).

Built in 1564 by Mimar Sinan for Rüstem Pasha, Grand Vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, this small mosque has an interior covered by beautiful Iznik pottery, then at its zenith.

The building was erected as a Roman Catholic church in 1325 by the friars of the Dominican Order, near or above an earlier chapel dedicated to Saint Paul (Italian: San Paolo) in 1233. In 1299, the Dominican Friar Guillaume Bernard de Sévérac bought a house near the church, where he established a monastery with 12 friars. A new, much larger church was built near or above the chapel of San Paolo in 1325. Thereafter the church was officially dedicated to San Domenico. After the Fall of Constantinople, according to the Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Genoa, the church, which by that time was known by the Turks under the name of Mesa Domenico, remained in Genoese hands, but between 1475 and 1478 it was transformed, with minor modifications, into a mosque by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and became known as Galata Camii ("Galata Mosque") or Cami-i Kebir ("Great Mosque"). Towards the end of the century Sultan Bayezid II assigned the building to those Muslims of Spain (Andalusia) who had fled the Spanish Inquisition and migrated to Istanbul; hence the present name Arap Camii (Arab Mosque). Today, Arap Camii is the largest mosque on the Galata side of the Golden Horn. It is one of the most interesting mosques in the city due to its early Italian Gothic architectural style and church belfry, which has practically remained unaltered even after being converted into a minaret.