Getting Around in Istanbul

The majority of the tourism in Istanbul is located in a relatively small geographical area. Most of the touristic sites and many hotels and restaurants are located in the ancient city in the Fatih neighborhood just south of the Golden Horn. Most of the sites including the Topkapi Palace Museum, Gülhane Park, the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia Mosque, the Blue Mosque, the Column of Constantine and both the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar are located within 20 minutes of the centrally located Sultanahmet tram stop.

On the northeast side of the Golden Horn most of the remaining points of interest, including the Karaköy – Kadıköy ferry dock, the Galata Tower, the Galata funicular, and the Istiklal Caddesi Tram and pedestrian walking street are easily accessible from the Karaköy stop on the same tram line.

Using a ride-share service such as Uber (which uses two local taxi services for vehicles and drivers) is ridiculously inexpensive. You can get to most tourist spots in the city from most hotels for less than 4 dollars or euros.

But for those that love to immerse themselves into the culture getting around on the various modes of public transportation is both easy and ridiculously inexpensive. A single trip ticket on the tram was costing about 50 cents at the time this page was published.  We provide all the information you need to ride the city’s trams, funiculars, ferries and buses by clicking on the corresponding photos below.

And although Istanbul isn’t the most bicycle friendly city in the world, we rode bikes in 2021 around the city and provide all the information you need to know about cycling around the city by clicking on the cycling link below.

Finally, although the most prominent electric scooter ride-sharing services in the Americas and Europe (e.g. Lime, Bolt, Tier, Bird, etc.) were not available in Istanbul during our 2021 visit, there are some local Turkish services offering the same type of mobile applications and services. We provide the information we have on the subject and reveal the issues we had attempting to use a couple of these services.