Visit the main highlights of Istanbul with your exclusive guide on this two-day excursion by private vehicle.
Your private tour will involve:
DAY 1: Blue Mosque, Byzantine Hippodrome, Topkapi Palace and Grand Bazaar
DAY 2: Tekfur Palace, Chora Mosque, St. Sophia Mosque, Underground Cistern, Spice Market
Free time for lunch at your leisure will be included in the itinerary and your guide will be able to make recommendations based on your requirements.
Detailed Itinerary:
DAY 1
The Blue Mosque
One of two supreme imperial mosques of the Ottoman Empire. Your day will start here, at one of the most famous religious monuments in the world, whose splendor is absolutely staggering. Inside the vast, peaceful space of this colossal building, carpeted with soft patterned rugs, are 20,000 brilliant blue glazed tiles, decorating every graceful column and arching dome with a beautiful floral motif. The overwhelming sense of space and of quiet intensity here evokes feelings that can't be forgotten. The formula for the tile glaze has long been lost, and not one of those 20,000 tiles can ever be copied or replaced.
The Blue Mosque also houses a museum of antique Turkish rugs with rare examples from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.
The Hippodrome
Continue on to the Hippodrome, where you can picture yourself an other side of ancient life. Here, Byzantine entertainment took place, including violent gladiator fights, chariot races, and other sporting events. With seating for 100,000, this enormous stadium was at the center of Constantinople's entertainment and political life.
Topkapi Palace
The next visit will be Topkapi Palace, which was the seat of the Ottoman Empire for nearly four centuries, and from where the sultans ruled over large portions of the globe. The palace, completed in 1465 and 1478, has some marvelous views both across the Bosphorus to the Sea of Marmara, and across the Golden Horn to the skyline of Galata and greater Istanbul. The Palace was in effect a self-contained city of its own, with a population of around 4,000 people, and covering an area of 70 hectares. 25 Sultans, from Sultan Mehmet II to Abdulmecit, over the course of 400 years, lived here in opulence. In 1924, only one year after Ataturk proclaimed the Turkish Republic, its official functions ceased and it was converted into a museum. Walk the grounds, explore the gardens once trodden over by Sultans, viziers, guards and women of the harem, and you will have a glimpse into a way of life that no longer exists. On you private tour you will see several sections of the Topkapi Museum's collections, including a Porcelain display containing one of the world's richest collections of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, and the Treasury, containing the treasures accumulated over the course of Ottoman rule, including the 86-carat Spoonmaker Diamond and the equally impressive Emerald Dagger. (The Harem Section visit is not included as it has a separate entrance fee; however it can be arranged upon request).
Lunch at Leisure
After completing the visit, free time will be provided to enjoy a local lunch.
The Grand Bazaar
Following lunch it will be time for the Grand Bazaar, a massive, historically important covered bazaar (the largest covered shopping space in the world), that can tempt even the thriftiest of shoppers with its unfathomable collection of precious handmade carpets, jewelry, leather and souvenirs.
Scenic City Drive
At the end of the tour you will have an orientation drive through the oldest residential district of the city along the Golden Horn before returning to the pier
DAY 2
Tekfur Palace
The day starts with a visit to Tekfur Palace, it is the only palace to survive from the Byzantine Blaherne Palace complex in Istanbul.
Chora Mosque
The next visit will be the Church of Chora, now known now as the Chora Mosque. This church, whose name means "outside the city", was built here in some form before the 5th century Roman city walls were built. The existing structure, however, dates to the 11th-14th centuries, and is renowned for its exquisite interior decorations, with paneled frescoes and mosaics that are true masterpieces of "the Renaissance" of Byzantine art. The mosaic panels depict scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary. When the church was converted into a mosque, these incredible works of art were covered over and whitewashed, but have since been restored and cleaned, after 1950, by the Byzantine Institute of the USA.
Haghia Sophia
Continue to Haghia Sophia, the 6th-century Byzantine church whose name means "Divine Wisdom", and which has been nominated the 8th wonder of the world by many historians. At one time, it may have been the largest building on the world's entire surface, and as a manmade structure ranked behind only the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China. For many centuries it stood as the largest church in the world, and today remains the 4th largest, behind St. Paul's in London, St. Peter's in Rome and the Duomo in Milan. The minarets that now tower above the gigantic dome were added after the conquest of Istanbul in 1453, when the church was converted into a mosque. As a testament to its grandeur, the greatest Ottoman architect, Mimar Sinan, once attested that he had spent his entire life trying to surpass its technical achievements. Upon completing the visit, free time will be provided for lunch
The Underground Cistern
The next visit after the lunch will be the Underground Cistern, the largest and most magnificent covered cistern in Istanbul. The Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnici), as it is known, is in fact not a basilica at all, but an enormous, cavernous water storage tank built under Emperor Justinian in 532 AD. The cistern was used to satisfy the growing demands of an expanding city, and supplied the Great Palace area with water during extended sieges. Its 80,000 cubic meters of water were pumped all the way from the Black Sea through an extensive system of aqueducts. Today, as you marvel at the awesome size of this underground structure from long ago, classical music plays above the walkways, carp swim below, and water drips from the ceiling and onto one of the 336 massive columns supporting the roof, each over 8 meters (26 feet) high.
The Egyptian Bazaar (Spice Market)
Finally stop at the Egyptian Bazaar, which was built in 1664 as part of the Yeni Cami complex and is so named because the shopkeepers here used to sell spices and herbs brought from or through Egypt. During the Ottoman period, in fact, only spices were sold here. Today it contains a wide variety of shops selling goods including dried fruit, pastries, basketwork, jewelry, haberdashery, drapery, and of course, spices.
Pera & Galata Districts
After completing the visits, you will have an orientation tour of the famous Pera and Galata District of the city before returning to the pier.