10 Day Highlights of Turkey Tour: Istanbul, Gallipoli, Troy, Ephesus & Cappadocia

A full guided walking day through Sultanahmet: palace, great domes, Roman racetrack and the Grand Bazaar.

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After breakfast, we set out on a comprehensive guided walking tour through the historic peninsula of Sultanahmet, the ancient heart of both Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul, where nearly every building has a story spanning centuries. We begin at Topkapi Palace, home to the Ottoman sultans for almost 400 years, from the mid-15th century until the mid-19th. Wandering through its four courtyards, kitchens that once fed thousands, and treasury rooms glittering with jeweled thrones and daggers, you get a genuine sense of the scale and opulence of imperial power at its height.

From there we walk to Hagia Sophia (interior access not included on this tour), the extraordinary structure Emperor Justinian completed in 537 AD, and which stood for nearly a thousand years as the largest cathedral in the world before its conversion first to a mosque, then briefly a museum, and today a mosque once again — its very walls a physical record of Istanbul's layered religious history. Directly across the square, the Blue Mosque, built in the early 17th century under Sultan Ahmed I, dazzles with over 20,000 hand-painted Iznik tiles and six soaring minarets, a rare number that once caused controversy since it matched the mosque in Mecca.

We continue through the Hippodrome, once a 100,000-seat chariot-racing stadium at the center of Byzantine public life, where the ancient Egyptian obelisk of Theodosius still stands exactly as it did 1,600 years ago, before finishing at the Grand Bazaar — one of the world's oldest and largest covered markets, its 4,000-plus shops spread across 61 covered streets since the 15th century, a sensory overload of carpets, ceramics, gold and spices that rewards an unhurried wander.

An early start for the Gallipoli Peninsula, the WWI battlefields and cemeteries, then a ferry to Canakkale.

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Pickup is early today, between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, for the roughly five-hour drive to the Gallipoli Peninsula, site of one of the most consequential and tragic campaigns of the First World War. In 1915, Allied forces — including tens of thousands of young men from Australia and New Zealand fighting far from home for the first time as national armies — attempted to force open the Dardanelles Strait, and were met by fierce Ottoman resistance under the command of a then little-known officer, Mustafa Kemal, who would later become Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic.

Walking this battlefield with a knowledgeable guide is a genuinely moving experience. We visit the Dardanelles Memorials, Brighton Beach and Beach Cemetery, then ANZAC Cove itself, the narrow strip of shoreline where Australian and New Zealand troops landed at dawn on April 25, 1915 — a date still commemorated every year as ANZAC Day. We continue to Ariburnu Cemetery, the ANZAC Commemorative Site, and the Respect to Mehmetcik Statue, honoring a Turkish soldier said to have carried a wounded enemy to safety under fire, a small story that captures the strange humanity found even amid the campaign's brutality.

Further stops include the Lone Pine Australian Memorial, built where a single Aleppo pine once stood amid a devastating battle for a few hundred meters of trench; Johnstons Jolly, where Turkish and Allied trenches sit remarkably close together, sometimes only meters apart; the Turkish 57th Infantry Regiment Cemetery, whose entire regiment was ordered by Ataturk to fight to the last man; The Nek, made famous by the film "Gallipoli"; and finally Chunuk Bair, the New Zealand Memorial marking the campaign's highest point of advance. After a local lunch, the day ends with a short ferry crossing of the Dardanelles to Canakkale for check-in and an overnight stay.

Troy in the morning, Pergamon in the afternoon, then on to the Aegean coast.

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Pickup around 8:30-8:45 AM for a visit to the legendary city of Troy, a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose excavated mound reveals no fewer than ten distinct cities, layered one atop another across roughly 4,000 years of continuous settlement. Immortalized by Homer's Iliad, Troy has captured imaginations for millennia — and though scholars still debate exactly how much of the epic reflects real events, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann's 19th-century excavations proved that a real, wealthy, fortified city did once stand on this spot. We see a full-scale replica of the iconic Trojan Horse, the Temple of Apollo, the ancient city walls, a Roman-era theater and the remains of a Greco-Roman senate building.

From Troy we continue to Pergamon (modern Bergama), once one of the great intellectual capitals of the Hellenistic world, home to a library said to have rivaled Alexandria's with an estimated 200,000 scrolls — a rivalry so intense that, according to legend, Egypt banned papyrus exports to Pergamon, prompting the city's scholars to perfect parchment (pergamena) as an alternative writing material instead. We explore the site of the monumental Altar of Zeus, its dramatic frieze now displayed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, and the breathtakingly steep acropolis theater, carved directly into the hillside. After a local lunch, we transfer to Kusadasi or Selcuk for check-in and an overnight stay.

A day trip to the white terraces of Pamukkale and the ancient healing city of Hierapolis.

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Pickup is around 7:30-8:00 AM for a day trip to Pamukkale and Hierapolis. Pamukkale takes its name, meaning "Cotton Castle," from the astonishing white travertine terraces that cascade down the hillside — formed over many thousands of years as mineral-rich thermal water flows over the slope and deposits layer upon layer of calcium carbonate, creating natural pools that shimmer brilliant white in the sun.

Above the terraces lies the ancient city of Hierapolis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site founded around the 2nd century BC specifically to take advantage of the healing thermal springs, which drew the sick and infirm from across the ancient world seeking cures. We explore its well-preserved Roman theater, its monumental Gate of Domitian, and one of the largest ancient necropolises in Anatolia, with over 1,200 tombs spanning Hellenistic, Roman and early Christian periods. You'll then have free time to walk the travertine terraces barefoot yourself, and optionally to swim in Cleopatra's Pool, a natural thermal pool scattered with fallen ancient marble columns, said by local tradition to have been a gift from Mark Antony to Cleopatra herself. After a local lunch, we transfer back to Kusadasi for free time and an overnight stay.

A full day at Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis site and the House of the Virgin Mary.

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Today is devoted entirely to Ephesus, once the capital of the Roman province of Asia and, in its 1st and 2nd century AD heyday, a city of perhaps a quarter of a million people — one of the largest and wealthiest in the entire Mediterranean world. Walking its marble-paved streets today, past the two-story facade of the Library of Celsus, the grand Curetes Street lined with the remains of shops and elite houses, and the vast Great Theatre that once held 25,000 spectators, it's remarkably easy to picture the bustle of daily Roman life here two thousand years ago.

We also visit the site of the once-colossal Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, four times larger than the Parthenon in its day, of which only a single reconstructed column remains standing amid the marshy field that has reclaimed the rest. Our day closes at the peaceful House of the Virgin Mary, tucked into wooded hills above Ephesus and revered by Christians and Muslims alike as her home in her final years, where the Apostle John is traditionally believed to have brought her for safekeeping after the crucifixion.

A morning flight to Cappadocia, then a free afternoon to settle into the valleys.

After breakfast, we transfer to the airport for your flight to Cappadocia, either direct or with a brief layover in Istanbul depending on the day's schedule. An agent holding a name sign greets you at the domestic terminal on arrival, and transfers you to your hotel for check-in and an overnight stay. Depending on your arrival time, the rest of the day is free to rest, wander your hotel town's streets, or simply take in your first glimpse of Cappadocia's otherworldly landscape — a region shaped by volcanic eruptions millions of years ago and then carved, over millennia, by wind and rain into the surreal valleys, cones and "fairy chimneys" you'll be exploring over the next two days.

Fairy chimneys, Avanos pottery, the Goreme Open-Air Museum and a sunset-side view from Uchisar Castle.

5 places you will visit today

Consider adding an optional early-morning hot air balloon ride today — ask your tour advisor for pricing and booking details. Cappadocia's balloon flights, drifting silently over the valleys at sunrise, are widely regarded as one of the most spectacular experiences in all of Turkey.

We begin at Devrent Valley, sometimes called "Imagination Valley" for its surreal collection of fairy chimneys, whose wind-and-rain-carved shapes seem to suggest camels, snakes and other figures depending on the light and your own imagination. We continue to Pasabag (Monk's Valley), famous for its distinctive multi-headed fairy chimneys — tall cones of soft volcanic tuff capped with harder basalt, a formation unique to this small pocket of Cappadocia — before visiting the riverside pottery town of Avanos, where the same red clay that has been worked here since Hittite times over 3,000 years ago is still shaped on foot-powered wheels today.

In the afternoon we explore the Goreme Open-Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and remarkable complex of rock-cut churches, chapels and monasteries dating from the 10th to 12th centuries, their interiors still adorned with vivid Byzantine frescoes depicting biblical scenes, painted directly onto volcanic rock by monastic communities who once lived in this valley. We finish the day at Uchisar Castle, the highest point in the region, a natural rock formation honeycombed with tunnels and rooms and used as a fortress and refuge since Byzantine times — the panoramic views from the top take in nearly all of Cappadocia at once.

Red Valley, Cavusin, Pigeon Valley and the Ozkonak Underground City.

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We begin at Red Valley, named for the vivid red and orange hues its rock takes on at sunrise and sunset, with a scenic 5 km hike through the Gulludere Valley past rock-cut churches carved directly into the cliffs, their facades and interiors bearing traces of frescoes painted by Byzantine-era Christian communities who found both shelter and sacred space in this landscape. We continue to Cavusin village, an atmospheric abandoned settlement of cave houses stacked up a cliff face, once home to Christian clergy and still watched over by the Church of St. John the Baptist, one of the oldest rock-cut churches in Cappadocia.

From there we visit Pigeon Valley, renowned for the hundreds of small pigeon houses carved into its cliffs by local farmers over centuries — pigeon droppings were prized as fertilizer, and the birds themselves as messengers, making these carved coops a genuinely practical piece of ancient agricultural infrastructure. In the afternoon we descend into Ozkonak Underground City, one of dozens of subterranean settlements carved into Cappadocia's soft volcanic rock, where early Christian communities sheltered from persecution and later invasion — its ventilation shafts, stone doors designed to seal tunnels from the inside, and multiple interconnected levels reveal just how sophisticated and self-sufficient underground life here could be.

A relaxed final breakfast and your airport transfer.

After a final Cappadocian breakfast, perhaps with one last look out over the valleys from your hotel terrace, the tour concludes with a transfer to the airport for your flight back to Istanbul or your onward international departure. From WWI history at Gallipoli, to the legends of Troy, the grandeur of Ephesus and Pamukkale, and the otherworldly landscapes of Cappadocia, we hope this journey has given you a genuinely comprehensive picture of what makes Turkey such an extraordinary country to explore.