The Most Beautiful Places in Istanbul
16 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Istanbul are Dolmabahçe Palace, Hagia Sophia and Sultan Ahmed Mosque. The list covers 16 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Istanbul has been an imperial capital for most of its history: as Constantinople it ruled the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years, and after 1453 it became the seat of the Ottoman sultans. Set on hills above the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, it gathered the finest builders and craftsmen of both empires, so that Roman engineering, Byzantine mosaics and Ottoman domes and tiles stand within walking distance of one another.
Hagia Sophia, completed under Justinian in the sixth century, carried the largest dome of its age and later served as a mosque, with minarets added outside. Facing it, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque raises six minarets over interiors lined with blue İznik tiles. Underground, the Basilica Cistern stores its forest of columns, two resting on carved Medusa heads. The Chora Church preserves some of the finest late Byzantine mosaics and frescoes anywhere, and Topkapı Palace spreads its courtyards, kiosks and harem across the tip of the old city.
Much of the Ottoman city was shaped by one architect, Mimar Sinan. His Süleymaniye Mosque crowns the third hill, the small Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and Rüstem Pasha mosques glow with İznik tilework, and his Haseki Hürrem Sultan and Çemberlitaş baths still show the domed halls of the Ottoman hamam. Older still, the Aqueduct of Valens strides across the city on Roman arches.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dolmabahçe Palace | Palace | |
| 2 | Hagia Sophia | Mosque | ✓ |
| 3 | Sultan Ahmed Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 4 | Chora Church (Kariye) | Church building | ✓ |
| 5 | Topkapı Palace | Palace | ✓ |
| 6 | Rumeli Hisarı | Fortress | |
| 7 | Basilica Cistern | Reservoir | |
| 8 | Maiden's Tower | Lighthouse | |
| 9 | Süleymaniye Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 10 | Aqueduct of Valens | Aqueduct | |
| 11 | Haydarpaşa railway station | Railway station | |
| 12 | Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı | Public bath | |
| 13 | Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque, Kadırga | Mosque | |
| 14 | Beylerbeyi Palace | Palace | |
| 15 | Rüstem Pasha Mosque | Mosque | |
| 16 | Çemberlitaş Hamamı | Public bath |
01 Dolmabahçe Palace
Turkey · 3.3 km from Istanbul41.039° N 29.002° E
Image by krigell from Pixabay Dolmabahçe Palace lines the European shore of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, a long white facade of columns and carved stone reflected in the water. Its name means "filled-in garden": the site was once a bay where the Ottoman fleet anchored, reclaimed in the eighteenth century as an imperial garden.
Did you know? The palace's art collection includes 23 paintings by the Russian marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky.
02 Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by edibejko from Pixabay The building that stands today was put up in barely five years.
Did you know? Crusaders stripped its treasures in 1204, smashed the altar and are said to have led mules inside to haul away the loot.
03 Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OWPictures from Pixabay Sultan Ahmed I commissioned this at just 19 years old, and it was built between 1609 and 1616 — a low point in Ottoman fortunes, coming right after an unfavorable peace ended a long war with Persia.
Did you know? Islamic scholars objected that an imperial mosque should be paid for with spoils of war, and they even forbade the faithful to pray in it.
04 Chora Church (Kariye)
Kariye Camii
Turkey · 3.3 km from Istanbul41.031° N 28.939° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Tadam · CC0 From the street in Edirnekapı the Chora looks modest: a cluster of brick domes and banded walls tucked just inside the land walls of Istanbul.
Did you know? The names of the craftsmen who made the Chora mosaics are unknown, although the work is counted among the finest of the Palaiologan Renaissance.
05 Topkapı Palace
Turkey · 1 km from Istanbul41.013° N 28.984° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by falco from Pixabay For almost four centuries the Ottoman Empire was governed from a headland at the very tip of old Istanbul. Mehmed II began Topkapı Palace in 1459, a few years after taking Constantinople, on Seraglio Point, where the Golden Horn opens into the Bosphorus and both meet the Sea of Marmara.
Did you know? Palace records show the Chinese porcelain holdings grew from about 400 pieces in the 16th century to 16,566 by the 18th century.
06 Rumeli Hisarı
Turkey · 10.1 km from Istanbul41.085° N 29.056° E
Image by 12019 from Pixabay Rumelihisarı was built for a single purpose, and it achieved it. In 1452 the young Ottoman sultan Mehmed II was preparing to take Constantinople, and his father's earlier attempt had shown that a Byzantine fleet on the Bosphorus could make a siege fail.
Did you know? The curtain walls run some 250 metres from north to south along the steep shore.
07 Basilica Cistern
Yerebatan Sarnıcı
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.978° E
Image by narya from Pixabay The Basilica Cistern is a drowned forest of stone under the streets of Istanbul's old city. Emperor Justinian I had it built in the 6th century on the site of a great Roman-era basilica — hence its name; in Turkish it is Yerebatan Sarnıcı or Yerebatan Sarayı, the "sunken palace".
Did you know? Historical accounts claim that some 7,000 enslaved labourers were put to work building the cistern under Justinian.
08 Maiden's Tower
Kız Kulesi
Turkey · 2.5 km from Istanbul41.021° N 29.004° E
Image by Ben_Kerckx from Pixabay The Maiden's Tower stands on a tiny islet in the Bosphorus, about 200 metres off the Asian shore at Üsküdar, where the strait opens into the Sea of Marmara.
Did you know? The underwater remains of a Byzantine defensive wall that once joined the islet to the Asian shore can still be seen.
09 Süleymaniye Mosque
Turkey · 0.9 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.964° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fotos1992 from Pixabay The Süleymaniye crowns Istanbul's Third Hill, and from the water its silhouette — a great central dome shouldered by cascading half-domes and four slender minarets — is one of the defining outlines of the old city's skyline.
Did you know? The complex rose on the site of the Old Palace, the first Ottoman palace in the city, which was still in use and had to be demolished for it.
10 Aqueduct of Valens
Bozdoğan Kemeri
Turkey · 1.6 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.956° E
Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Aqueduct of Valens is the most striking piece of Roman engineering still standing in the middle of Istanbul.
Did you know? Byzantium had an official called the logothete of the waters; one holder, Basil Maleses, was captured by the Seljuks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
11 Haydarpaşa railway station
Turkey · 4.4 km from Istanbul40.996° N 29.019° E
Image by muratortasil from Pixabay Haydarpaşa station stands at the water's edge on the Asian shore of Istanbul, a massive stone block in a German-inflected Neoclassical style that seems oddly northern on the Bosphorus. The impression is well founded.
Did you know? German and Italian stonemasons carved the façade decoration, and the German builders founded their own small neighbourhood, with a school, in nearby Yeldeğirmeni.
12 Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı
Haseki Hamamı
Turkey · 1.2 km from Istanbul41.007° N 28.979° E
Gryffindor This panoramic image was created with Autostitch (stitched images may differ from reality) . · Public domain Few buildings in Istanbul have better neighbours than the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı.
Did you know? Each hot room follows a cross-shaped plan, with four iwans and four private corner cubicles grouped around the central octagonal heated stone.
13 Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque, Kadırga
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.972° E
Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0 On a steep slope in the old quarter of Kadırga in Istanbul, the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque hides one of the most beautiful tiled interiors of the Ottoman world behind a modest courtyard.
Did you know? Although the mosque was a joint foundation with his wife Ismihan Sultan, only Sokollu Mehmed Pasha is named on the foundation inscription.
14 Beylerbeyi Palace
Turkey · 6.2 km from Istanbul41.043° N 29.040° E
User:Roweromaniak · CC BY-SA 2.5 On the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, its long white façade rising straight from the water, Beylerbeyi Palace was built as a place for the Ottoman sultans to escape the summer heat and to impress the most important guests of their empire.
Did you know? The deposed Sultan Abdülhamid II spent his last six years at the palace and died there in 1918.
15 Rüstem Pasha Mosque
Turkey · 0.5 km from Istanbul41.018° N 28.969° E
RramazanŞahin · CC0 From the street, Rüstem Pasha Mosque hardly announces itself. It stands in Tahtakale, the tight commercial quarter behind the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul's old city, lifted on a high terrace above a block of vaulted shops whose rents were meant to pay for its upkeep.
Did you know? Some historians think Rüstem Pasha favoured the tiles partly to support the court designer Kara Memi, known for his elegant floral motifs.
16 Çemberlitaş Hamamı
Turkey · 1 km from Istanbul41.009° N 28.972° E
Azerifactory · CC BY-SA 4.0 Çemberlitaş Hamamı has been heating water and steam on the same corner of old Istanbul since 1584.
Did you know? After a two-day fire in July 1660 left the building badly damaged, the rent charged for running the bath was cut in half.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Istanbul?
- On our list, Dolmabahçe Palace ranks first, followed by Hagia Sophia and Sultan Ahmed Mosque.
- Who was Mimar Sinan?
- Mimar Sinan was the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, serving sultans including Suleiman the Magnificent. He designed the Süleymaniye Mosque and hundreds of other mosques, baths and bridges.
- Why is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque called the Blue Mosque?
- Its interior is decorated with more than twenty thousand hand-painted İznik tiles, many in shades of blue, which gave the mosque its popular name.
- How old is Hagia Sophia?
- The present building was completed in 537 under Emperor Justinian I, replacing earlier churches on the same site.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Istanbul?
- In our collection, the places in Istanbul are most often mosques (5), palaces (3), museums (2) and public baths (2).
- How many places are on this list in Istanbul?
- The list covers 16 places.