Istanbul Old City: Basilica Cistern - Blue Mosque - Grand Bazaar

Largest of several hundred ancient Byzantine cisterns built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527-565). Huge underground Roman water source held up with 336 marble columns covering 9,800 sq. meters.

A popular tourist site, sits next to the Hagia Sophia, and continues to function as a mosque today. The Blue Mosque, as it is popularly known, was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has five main domes, six minarets, and eight secondary domes with traditional Ottoman architecture and is considered to be the last great mosque of the classical period.

The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social center of Constantinople. Today it is a square with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. Monuments decorating the Hippodrome include the 3500-year-old Egyptian Obelisk, Serpentine Column...

This beautiful square and a great place to make a stop, relax and take photos of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

The Church of Divine Wisdom, a fifteen hundred years old splendid monument, is a must see in Istanbul, built to be the world’s largest place of worship by Emperor Justinian in 532 AD.

Grand Covered Bazaar

The historical city of Istanbul, the only city in the world located on two continents, was the capital of three great empires; Roman, Byzantine and the Ottoman Empire.