Istanbul: The Trace City — Topkapı, Hippodrome & Grand Bazaar

Istanbul's Old City is usually experienced as a checklist of monuments. This walk takes a different approach: following the streets, public spaces, neighborhoods, and surviving traces that reveal how the city changed from Constantinople to Ottoman Istanbul and into the city of today. Begin inside Topkapı Palace's First Courtyard, then move from the monumental center around Hagia Sophia and the Hippodrome into Kadırga's neighborhood streets. Along the way, encounter a Greek Orthodox church, an Ottoman hammam, the route of the ancient Mese, the Column of Constantine, the Grand Bazaar, and Beyazıt Square. Rather than moving from attraction to attraction, the walk connects these places as parts of one evolving city — imperial, religious, civic, residential, and commercial. No paid admission is required for the standard itinerary. Just four to five hours on foot, reading Istanbul through the traces its many lives have left behind.