Highlights of Sultanahment, Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey

As my very first – and very short – trip to Istanbul perfectly illustrated, you can claim reasonable familiarity with the main sights of Istanbul by spending just a few hours in or around the Sultanahmet area. There is a high concentration of prime points of interest in Sultanahmet, which is why practically every visit to the grand city starts here.

The two unmissable highlights – Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque – are well covered in that photo essay from 2019. This time around, I mostly kept my camera away near those, so the appearance of the dome of Hagia Sofia in the background of this shot with the German Fountain at the fore is a happenstance of the perspective.

Sultanahmet Square features a trio of monuments, the most prominent of which is the obelisk of Theodosius, dating from around 1400 BCE and standing in this same place since around the 4th century CE.

The smallest of the three is the Serpent Column, whose replica stands in Delphi in Greece. This original has been here also since the early days of Constantinople. The last of the three obelisks is the one that commemorates the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which is what this public place used to be all those centuries ago. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).