Journey to Chora: The Walls, the Conquest and Kariye

Knowing Istanbul only through Sultanahmet is like knowing a book by its cover. On this tour we leave the crowds of the Old City and ride the tram to the city’s western edge, to the Theodosian land walls that have stood since the fifth century. At Topkapı, in front of the walls, we hear the story of the siege of 1453 and the morning of 29 May, where it happened, and step into the Panorama 1453 Museum to see the siege all around us in a 360-degree painting.

Then we take the tram again to Edirnekapı, the gate Ottoman tradition links with the Sultan’s entry into the city, and walk to Chora, visiting it after a lunch break. Its name comes from the Greek for “the countryside, outside the city”, and its early fourteenth-century mosaics and frescoes are among the finest pages of Byzantine art. At the Tekfur Palace, the surviving part of the Blachernae palace quarter, we look out over the city and the Golden Horn, pass the Ivaz Efendi Mosque and finish below in Ayvansaray at the Holy Spring of the Virgin of Blachernae.

Byzantine Chora and the Ottoman conquest meet along the same few kilometres. Tours run on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 for five to six hours, in English or Turkish, meeting next to the Sultanahmet tram stop. €150 per person, tram rides and museum entries included, lunch not included, children under 10 free, 2 to 20 travellers, free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Your guide is Osman Altay or one of our experienced guides; private tours for your own group are available on request.