Places

For a thousand years the largest cathedral in the world, then a mosque, then a museum, and a mosque again today.

Twenty thousand İznik tiles inside, six minarets outside, and still a working neighbourhood mosque.

Four courtyards instead of one building — the logic of a campaign tent, in stone.

Three hundred and thirty-six columns under the street, holding the water of a city that could be besieged.

The mosque Sinan built at his height, on the one hill from which you see the whole city.

The finest surviving set of Byzantine mosaics, in a small building well away from the queues.

More than four thousand shops under vaults, and a map nobody manages to hold in their head.

An L of vaults beside the harbour, built to pay for the mosque next door.

The tower of a foreign colony that ended up inside the city surrounding it.

An islet mid-current, with two thousand years of usefulness and a better legend.

The Jewish and Greek quarters of the Ottoman city, still with the hills and the churches that left behind.

A whole valley hollowed out from within: churches, refectories and houses inside the rock.

The highest point in Cappadocia, and the place to watch the balloons from the ground.

Several levels below ground, with ventilation shafts, stables, and stone doors that only open from the inside.

A whole marble street, with the city still standing on both sides.

Thermal water that leaves calcium wherever it runs, and a city built on top because of it.