Historic Areas of Istanbul

Hagia Sophia is not a museum anymore, and if you show up expecting the secular exhibition space that filled travel guides for the past decade, you will be surprised to find yourself removing your shoes and covering your hair at the door. Turkey reconverted it into an active mosque in 2020, and a second major Byzantine landmark, the Chora Church, followed the same path in 2024. Getting this right before you land in Istanbul changes how you plan your day, what you wear, and which hours you can actually walk through either building.

Hagia Sophia, as it functions today

The building now operates as a working mosque with a layered visitor system rather than a single free-for-all interior. The ground floor is reserved as active prayer space, generally free to enter for worship, while the upper galleries operate as a paid visiting area for tourists, currently around 25 euros for foreign visitors. Friday closures matter more here than almost anywhere else in the city: from roughly midday until mid-afternoon on Fridays, the building shuts to sightseers entirely for the main weekly prayer. Standard hours run from 9am to 7pm in the cooler months and stretch to 8pm in summer, with last entry about half an hour before closing. Dress modestly, expect to cover your shoulders and knees, and bring your own scarf if you are a woman planning to enter, since the loaner scarves at the door work in a pinch but are not pleasant.

None of this makes Hagia Sophia less worth seeing. If anything, watching it function as a living place of worship again, layered over nearly 1,500 years of Byzantine and Ottoman history in the same walls, gives the space a different charge than the hushed museum atmosphere it had for decades. My opinion: go in the first hour after opening on a weekday, both to beat the crowds and to avoid any chance of a prayer-time closure disrupting your plan.

Blue Mosque, right across the square

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, universally known as the Blue Mosque for its interior Iznik tilework, sits close enough to Hagia Sophia that most visitors treat the pair as a single stop. It remains an active mosque as it always has, so the same dress code and prayer-time awareness apply, though its five main minarets are worth confirming with your own eyes since the actual count is often garbled in tourist copy.

Topkapi Palace

Home to Ottoman sultans from 1465 until the mid-19th century, Topkapi’s Harem quarters and Treasury, which holds the Topkapi Dagger and a nearly 90-carat diamond among other pieces, reward setting aside a genuinely unhurried half day rather than the rushed hour most package tours allow. The Sacred Relics Room, housing objects Ottoman sultans claimed as belonging to the Prophet Muhammad, draws less crowd pressure than the Treasury and is worth prioritizing if your time is tight.

Basilica Cistern, post-restoration

The cistern closed for a multi-year restoration and reopened in July 2022 with real structural changes worth knowing about. Crews removed roughly 1,600 cubic meters of accumulated sediment and old concrete overlay, revealing the original 6th-century Byzantine brick floor, and installed a new steel walkway system physically separated from the ancient structure to improve both seismic safety and the visitor experience. All 336 columns remain in place across their original 12 rows of 28, so despite the years of closure and renovation, the physical scale you see today matches what earlier visitors described.

Chora Church, now Kariye Camii

This is the correction most guides still miss entirely. After a presidential decree in August 2020 and a subsequent four-year restoration, the building reopened in May 2024 as an active mosque under the name Kariye Camii, not as the Kariye Museum many sites still list. The good news for anyone visiting for the art rather than the faith: the extraordinary 14th-century Palaiologan-era mosaics and frescoes, widely considered the finest surviving cycle of Byzantine religious art anywhere, remain visible in the entrance halls and side chapel. A small number of images inside the nave, which now functions as the men’s prayer space, are covered by curtains that open outside of prayer times. Expect an entrance fee in the range of 20 euros, the same dress code as Hagia Sophia, and the same advice to avoid the Friday midday prayer window.

Beyond Sultanahmet and Fatih

Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue give you Istanbul’s contemporary pulse rather than its Byzantine layer, useful as a contrast after a day of mosques and cisterns. The Galata Tower delivers the best panoramic photo in the old city, though lines can run long at sunset, so an early morning visit trades a slightly flatter light for a much shorter wait. Eyup Sultan Mosque, on one of Istanbul’s seven hills overlooking the Golden Horn, draws a different crowd entirely, largely Turkish pilgrims rather than international tourists, and it is worth the trip out for that atmosphere alone.

On the Asian side, Kadikoy’s Moda neighborhood offers a genuinely local seaside evening away from the historic peninsula’s tour groups, and it is one of the better places in the city for a relaxed dinner without inflated tourist pricing.

Practical notes

Istanbul’s tram and ferry network covers the historic sites efficiently and cheaply, and a rechargeable Istanbulkart works across trams, ferries, and buses, saving both money and hassle compared to individual paper tickets. Haggling is genuinely expected in the Grand Bazaar and similar markets, but not at museum ticket counters or restaurants, so save the negotiating instinct for where it actually applies. Given the current mosque status of both Hagia Sophia and Chora, pack a lightweight scarf and a pair of slip-on shoes in your day bag no matter what else is on your itinerary that day.