Audioguides Istanbul

Greek settlers from Megara founded Byzantium around 660 BCE at the mouth of the Bosphorus, choosing a promontory where two continents nearly touch. Constantine the Great remade it as Constantinople in 330 CE and turned it into the capital of the Roman Empire, then the Byzantine Empire, which held on for another eleven centuries after Rome itself fell. Mehmed II rode through the walls in 1453 and made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire, which held it for another five. No other city on Earth has served as the seat of empire for so long, across so many civilisations. The Hagia Sophia, which Justinian built in 537, stood for a thousand years as the largest cathedral ever constructed.

The Bosphorus, the narrow strait that Istanbul straddles, is not merely geography.

It is the reason the city exists. European Istanbul on the western bank hosts Sultanahmet with its dense layer of Byzantine and Ottoman monuments, the covered Grand Bazaar, and the Galata Tower rising above the Golden Horn. Asian Istanbul on the eastern bank is quieter, more residential, full of tea gardens and fish restaurants along the Kadikoy waterfront. Crossing the strait on a ferry for a few lira, watching the minarets and the seagulls from the water, is still one of the genuinely free pleasures left in a major city.