Istanbul, Layer by Layer

Settle into your hotel in Sultanahmet. The neighbourhood needs no navigation app: the minarets are your landmarks and the sea breeze off the Marmara keeps things honest.

Begin with the building that has redefined itself every few centuries. Whether you encounter it as a Byzantine church, an Ottoman mosque or the layered hybrid it is today, Ayasofya's sheer scale — and the gold mosaics that survive above the Islamic calligraphy — is genuinely disorienting in the best way.

Step out of Ayasofya and cross into the open space that was once the civic heart of Byzantium. The Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpentine Column and the German Fountain stand within a few metres of each other — a compressed archive of four civilisations.

The cascade of domes and the six minarets are photogenic from any angle outside, but it is the interior — the 20,000 hand-painted İznik tiles covering every surface — that earns the long queue. Time a visit for late afternoon when the light angles in perfectly.

Eating inside a Roman cistern is not a gimmick when the kitchen takes its job seriously. Sarnic occupies a dramatic vaulted space just steps from the Blue Mosque, making it an atmospheric close to a monument-heavy first afternoon.

Cap the evening on one of Sultanahmet's rooftop perches, where the illuminated domes and minarets are laid out like a postcard — except you are inside it.

Descend into the forest of 336 columns that kept Byzantine Constantinople supplied with water. The two Medusa-head column bases — one inverted, one on its side — have puzzled historians for centuries, and the atmospheric lighting rewards an early morning visit before crowds gather.

The administrative and ceremonial heart of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. Walk through the successive courtyards from the Gate of Salutation to the harem and the Treasury, where the Topkapı Dagger and Spoonmaker's Diamond sit behind glass with strangely modest fanfare.

A short walk downhill brings you to one of Istanbul's most storied dining rooms — azure-tiled walls, a mezzanine above the Spice Bazaar entrance and a menu rooted in Ottoman-Turkish cooking that has changed little over the restaurant's long life.

More than 4,000 shops spread across 61 covered streets — carpets, ceramics, gold, spices and leather in a warren that has been trading since the 15th century. Resist the urge to buy everything in the first five minutes and let the spatial logic reveal itself.

Hamdi's terrace looks directly across to the Golden Horn and the New Mosque. The kitchen is serious about southeastern Anatolian cooking — kebabs built on charcoal discipline rather than tourist shorthand — and the view at dusk is genuinely arresting.

A low-key Sultanahmet bar where the evening can end without drama — local raki or a cold beer, conversation and the sounds of the old city settling in for the night.

Sinan's masterwork crowns the Third Hill with a gravity that Hagia Sophia inspires from the outside too. The interior proportions are calmer and more assured than any other Ottoman mosque in the city, and the courtyard looks out over the Golden Horn with quiet confidence.

Set in the historic soup kitchen attached to the Süleymaniye complex, Daruzziyafe serves Ottoman-inspired dishes in a setting that connects directly to the building you have just visited. It is about as locationally coherent as lunch can get.

Walk down to the waterfront and cross Galata Bridge on foot — fishermen's lines dangling from every railing, ferries churning below. Pause at the New Mosque on the Eminönü side, whose name is something of a joke: it has stood here since 1663.

The Genoese tower that has watched over Beyoğlu since 1348. The climb — or the lift — rewards with a 360-degree panorama that finally stitches the European and Asian shores of Istanbul into one coherent picture.

Housed in the former Ottoman Bank building at the foot of the tower, SALT Galata runs rotating exhibitions on architecture, design and contemporary culture. Even a brief visit through its grand banking hall is worth the detour.

Giritli specialises in the cooking of the Cretan Greeks — a tradition that arrived with the population exchanges of the early 20th century and found a home in Istanbul's kitchen. Expect a generous spread of mezes followed by grilled fish in a relaxed garden setting.

End the Beyoğlu evening at this Beyoğlu bar, where the crowd is local and the atmosphere is neither themed nor frantic — just a good place to sit and talk after a long day on foot.

Few visitors make it to this 6th-century Byzantine church converted to a mosque — which means you often have the octagonal interior and its delicate mosaics almost to yourself. It pre-dates the great Hagia Sophia and shares the same imperial architect.

Inside the first courtyard of Topkapı, this early Byzantine church is one of the oldest surviving in the world and has never been converted to a mosque — leaving its stripped-back interior an almost archaeological experience.

A neighbourhood table in Fatih that feels like it belongs to the locals who actually live here rather than the tourist circuit. A good place to slow down before the afternoon's final sights.

A 360-degree panoramic painting — one of the largest in the world — reconstructs the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in cinematic detail. It is unashamedly dramatic and surprisingly moving as a way to understand the event that shaped everything you have been looking at all week.

Walk a section of the Theodosian Land Walls — the 5th-century fortifications that held for a thousand years. Crumbling and overgrown in places, they feel more like a piece of the actual past than almost anything else in the city.

Close the journey with a final Bosphorus-facing dinner at Hamdi — already visited, so instead head to Giritli or pull up a stool somewhere along the waterfront and let the city do the talking. Tonight the lights on the water are your send-off.

A classic Sultanahmet local bar to close the trip — unfussy, characterful and a good place to order one last drink before the airport transfer tomorrow morning.