Istanbul: how many days you need and the best month to go

When to go, and what each month costs you

Istanbul has four real seasons and two clearly better ones. There is also one moveable factor worth checking: Ramadan shifts about eleven days earlier each year and changes the rhythm of the city.

1. January: Worth it, butJan
2. February: Worth it, butFeb
3. March: Worth it, butMar
4. April: Go nowApr
5. May: Go nowMay
6. June: Go nowJun
7. July: Think twiceJul
8. August: Think twiceAug
9. September: Go nowSep
10. October: Go nowOct
11. November: Worth it, butNov
12. December: Worth it, butDec

• Go now
• Worth it, but
• Think twice

• April to early June

  Go now

  The best window of the year

  Mild, long days, and the city at its most pleasant for walking. April brings the tulip season, which is a genuine local tradition rather than a tourist invention.

• September and October

  Go now

  Warm water, thinner crowds

  Summer heat has broken, the Bosphorus is still warm, and the summer visitors have largely gone. Arguably the single best month is October.

• November to March

  Worth it, but

  Grey, cheap and atmospheric

  Cold, often wet, and occasionally snowy — which is genuinely striking here. Prices drop sharply and the great interiors are empty. A good trip if you are content to spend it indoors and on ferries.

• July and August

  Think twice

  Hot, humid and at peak load

  High heat with high humidity, and the historic peninsula at its most crowded. The queues at the major sites are at their worst and the walking is unpleasant by midday.

• Ramadan (moves each year)

  Worth it, but

  A different city, worth knowing about in advance

  The dates move roughly eleven days earlier every year, so check them against your trip. Daytime rhythms change, evenings become livelier, and the holiday at the end is a major domestic travel period with full transport and hotels.

How many days Istanbul needs

Four days is a realistic minimum. The historic peninsula alone is a full two days, and a trip that never crosses to the Asian side or up the Bosphorus has seen a fraction of the city.

Five days lets you give a day to the water itself — a slow ferry up the strait and back — which more people remember than the monuments.

How the city is arranged

Two bodies of water divide the city into three parts. Which part you are in decides your day far more than distance does.

• Sultanahmet and the historic peninsula — the great mosques, the palace, the bazaars. Dense, and the most visited square kilometre in the country.
• Beyoğlu and Karaköy — across the Golden Horn, the nineteenth-century city, and where the food and nightlife are.
• The Asian side (Kadıköy, Üsküdar) — a twenty-minute ferry and a completely different pace. Where the city stops performing.
• Up the Bosphorus — villages along the strait, reachable by ferry, and worth a full day.

Where to stay, and which side of the water to be on

Istanbul is split in two by the Bosphorus and again by the Golden Horn, so the accommodation decision here is genuinely geographic. Sultanahmet has the monuments and nothing else: the day ends and the district empties, with restaurants living off the visitor who passes through once.

Beyoğlu, across the Golden Horn, is where the city lives and eats. It is one tram from the monuments and where nearly everyone should sleep from their second visit onwards — and on the first too, if the plan is anything more than photographing mosques.

Compare these areas against your priorities

Airport to centre, and the transport to use

Istanbul has two large airports and both are far out. Istanbul Airport sits to the northwest and has a metro as well as Havaist buses; the trip to the centre does not come in under a good hour. Sabiha Gökçen is on the Asian side, and from there to Beyoğlu takes even longer, especially in traffic.

The first thing to do on arrival is get an İstanbulkart: it covers metro, tram, bus, funicular and — this is the important part — the ferries. You buy it from machines in stations and top it up, and it is vastly cheaper than single tickets.

• The Bosphorus ferries are public transport and cost the same as a metro ride. The paid tourist cruise covers practically the same route for a great deal more.
• Crossing by ferry to the Asian side is the best half hour in the city and costs one fare. Kadıköy and Üsküdar are the usual destinations.
• The T1 tram runs the historic peninsula and connects to the Galata Bridge. It is the line everyone uses and it runs full.
• Beyoğlu's hills are serious. The Tünel and Karaköy funiculars exist precisely for that and are included in the card.
• Many museums and palaces close one day a week, and not all the same day. It is what wrecks the most plans in this city.

Day trips and excursions

Istanbul is so large that the best "day trips" are within the city itself: crossing to Asia or heading up the Bosphorus already changes worlds. Even so, there are day trips that work, and one almost nobody does that is very much worth it.

• Princes' Islands (Adalar) — about an hour and a bit by ferry, car-free, with wooden houses and horse carts. It is the classic summer escape for people who live here.
• Up the Bosphorus to Anadolu Kavağı — a long ferry almost to the Black Sea, with a castle above and fishing villages. Half a day, and it is public transport.
• Bursa — the first Ottoman capital, around two and a half hours by fast ferry plus bus. Green mosque, thermal baths and a mountain with a cable car.
• Edirne — Sinan's masterpiece, near the Bulgarian border, about two and a half hours away. The serious architecture trip, and very few people make it.
• Şile and Ağva — Black Sea beaches an hour and a half out, for summer. It is what people from Istanbul do when the heat bites.

Eating and haggling in Istanbul

Turkish food in Istanbul is far more than kebab, and in fact what the city does best is breakfast and mezze. Kahvaltı, the Turkish breakfast, is a full meal: cheeses, olives, eggs, jams, bread and tea, served on a table to share, and it is one of the best things about the trip.

In the bazaars, expect haggling, which here is an anticipated conversation rather than a fight. The practical rule: if you are not going to buy, do not ask the price, because opening a negotiation and walking away is considered rude.

• Restaurants with someone at the door inviting you in are, almost without exception, the worst on the street. That applies to all of Sultanahmet.
• Tea is served constantly and is usually free in shops and businesses. Accepting it does not oblige you to buy anything, even if it is part of the script.
• Balık ekmek — grilled fish sandwich by the Galata Bridge — is the street classic. The stalls by the water at Eminönü have been doing it for decades.
• Check the bill in tourist areas. Starters nobody ordered appear and get charged; you can refuse them when they reach the table.
• Fish and the Asian city: Kadıköy has the city's best market and a density of mezze bars that does not exist on the other side.

Where to eat in Istanbul, dish by dish

The rule in Istanbul is geographic and it is stark: the closer you are to Sultanahmet, the worse and more expensive the food. The tourist core has almost no good restaurants and a great many touts. Cross to Kadıköy on the Asian side, or walk up to Karaköy and Beyoğlu, and both problems disappear at once.

• Spice Bazaar

  Market

  The market that is still about food

  Built in the 1660s and still, unlike its bigger neighbour, mostly a food market: spices, dried fruit, cheese, Turkish delight. The stalls at the entrances are the tourist prices; the shops in the surrounding streets are where the city actually shops, and they are cheaper and better.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Grand Bazaar

  Market

  The famous one, and what to do about lunch there

  One of the oldest covered markets in the world, and today mostly about carpets, gold and ceramics rather than food. It is worth walking through. Eat before you go in or after you come out — the restaurants inside charge bazaar prices for ordinary food, and the good lokantas are in the streets around it.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Çiya Sofrası

  Institution

  Regional Turkish cooking, not kebab-shop Turkish

  On the Asian side in Kadıköy, cooking dishes from across Anatolia that most Istanbul restaurants do not serve. Part of it works by weight — you take a tray, point, and it is weighed at the end, which is the easiest way to eat here without a shared language. Crossing the Bosphorus by ferry to get there is half the pleasure.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Balık ekmek

  What to order

  The cheap thing to eat at the water, and its caveat

  A grilled fish sandwich with onion and lemon, eaten standing at the Eminönü waterfront. It is a genuine Istanbul institution and the boats at Eminönü are now a tourist operation with tourist prices. The version sold from small stalls further along the Golden Horn, or over in Karaköy, is the same sandwich for much less.

  Check it on Wikidata

Things that change the trip

1. 1Use the ferries as transport, not as an excursion. They are frequent, cheap, and usually faster than going around by land.
2. 2Get a rechargeable transit card at the airport. It works on ferries, trams, metro and buses.
3. 3Mosques are working places of worship: dress modestly, and expect them to close to visitors around prayer times.
4. 4The main bazaars are worth seeing but are not where locals shop. The neighbourhood markets are better and cheaper.
5. 5Cross to the Asian side at least once. It is twenty minutes and it is the part of the trip most people say they wish they had given more time.