16 Days Best of Turkey Tour Package

After arrival at Istanbul Airport or Sabiha Gokcen Airport, our team will meet you and transfer you to your hotel. The remainder of the day is free.

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the Sultanahmet historic district.

• Blue Mosque: The Sultan Ahmed Mosque was designed to rival Hagia Sophia directly across the square, its six minarets and cascading domes made it the grandest Ottoman religious building in the city at the time of its completion. The interior is lined with more than 20,000 hand-painted blue Iznik tiles that give the mosque its popular name.
• Hagia Sophia: Standing for nearly 1,500 years, Hagia Sophia was the largest cathedral in the world for almost a thousand years before the Ottomans converted it into a mosque in 1453. The interior is a layered archive of Byzantine mosaics, Ottoman calligraphic medallions, and the original massive dome that still defines the Istanbul skyline.
• Hippodrome: Once the ceremonial center of Constantinople where chariot races and public spectacles drew crowds of 100,000, the Hippodrome's ancient spine is still visible today with the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpent Column, and the Column of Constantine still standing. The scale of the original arena can be felt by walking the full length of the plaza.
• Topkapi Palace and Harem: The Ottoman sultans ruled their empire from Topkapi for nearly four centuries, and the palace complex spreads across four courtyards with treasury rooms, sacred relics, and the famous harem quarters where the dynasty's private life unfolded. The overlook terrace above the Golden Horn is one of Istanbul's finest viewpoints.
• Grand Bazaar: One of the world's oldest and largest covered markets, the Grand Bazaar has been a commercial hub since 1461 with 61 streets and more than 4,000 shops. The layered urban atmosphere, spices, carpets, gold, ceramics, and the sounds of generations of trade, is worth at least an hour of open exploration.

17:00 - Transfer back to your hotel after the tour.

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast

Today is left open in Istanbul. Use it for neighborhood walks, museums, shopping, or rest before the southeastern section of the package begins.

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

05:00 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the airport for the flight to Diyarbakir. (Pickup time and airport may change.)

08:00 - Flight from Istanbul to Diyarbakir. (Flight time may change.)

09:30 - Arrival in Diyarbakir and transfer to begin the city program. (Arrival time may change according to availability.)

• Old City Walls: Diyarbakir's ancient basalt walls stretch nearly six kilometers and rank among the best-preserved Roman and Byzantine fortifications in the world, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Their dark volcanic stone gives the city its most immediate and dramatic visual identity from the first moment of arrival.
• Four-Legged Minaret and Hazrat Suleiman Mosque: The Four-Legged Minaret is one of the most architecturally eccentric structures in Turkey, its columns rise from a narrow base above a busy street, giving the city's Ottoman-era spiritual heritage an unexpectedly dynamic form. Together with the Hazrat Suleiman Mosque complex, it defines the local religious quarter of the old town.
• Diyarbakir Archaeological Museum and Ickale: The archaeological museum holds a rich collection tracing Mesopotamian civilizations from the Neolithic through the Byzantine period, and the Ickale citadel sits at the highest point inside the ancient walls with sweeping views over the Tigris River bend. Both stops together put the deep chronology of Diyarbakir into sharp focus.
• Surp Giragos Church, Great Mosque, Hasan Pasha Caravanserai, and 10 Arches Bridge: The Armenian Surp Giragos Church, the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir, and the commercial network of the Hasan Pasha Han together represent the multicultural layers that made this city one of the most contested and storied in the entire Middle East. The Ten-Arched Bridge crossing the Tigris dates back over a thousand years.

17:00 - The tour ends and you will be transferred to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Diyarbakir.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:30 - Pick up from your hotel and depart Diyarbakir by road toward Mardin. The drive takes about 90 minutes.

• Midyat Old Town: Midyat is the commercial and cultural center of the Tur Abdin plateau, with a dense historic core of honey-colored limestone houses carved with intricate floral and geometric facades. The narrow alleys and covered market streets here offer a quieter, more intimate introduction to southeastern stone architecture before the drama of Mardin proper.
• Mardin Castle (exterior view): The castle sits at the crest of the limestone ridge above Mardin, providing the defining viewpoint over the entire city and the Mesopotamian plain stretching to the horizon below. The dramatic topography, a densely terraced hillside town looking out over an infinite flat plateau, is unlike any other city in Turkey.
• Deyrulzafaran Monastery and Great Mosque of Mardin: The Saffron Monastery (Deyrulzafaran) is one of the oldest active Christian monasteries in the world, serving the Syriac Orthodox community since the fifth century in a remote setting outside the city. The Ulu Camii (Great Mosque) of Mardin, built in the twelfth century, represents the Islamic architectural heritage of the city with an equally ancient and ornate character.
• Local Bazaar and Abbara passages: Mardin's traditional bazaar and covered Abbara passages form a living commercial network woven between historic caravanserais and artisan workshops. Walking through them gives the route an everyday human texture that balances the weight of the monastery and mosque visits.

17:00 - The tour ends and continue by road from Mardin to Sanliurfa. The journey takes about 3 hours.

Overnight stay in Sanliurfa.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:00 - Pick up from your hotel for the most historically layered day of the entire journey.

• Gobeklitepe: Discovered in 1994 and dated to around 10,000 BC, Gobeklitepe is the oldest known ritual complex in the world, predating Stonehenge by six thousand years and upending previous assumptions about when organized religion and monumental architecture began. The T-shaped pillars covered in animal carvings emerge from the hilltop as the most startling archaeological discovery of the modern era.
• Harran and the Beehive Houses: Harran is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, mentioned in the Book of Genesis and recorded in Assyrian inscriptions. The extraordinary beehive-shaped mud-brick houses that still stand in the village are a building type unique to this part of the Fertile Crescent, adapted to the flat, treeless landscape where timber was unavailable for roofing.
• Balikligol (Pool of Abraham): In Islamic tradition, Balikligol marks the site where the Prophet Abraham was thrown into a fire by the Assyrian king Nimrod, and God transformed the flames into water and the burning coals into fish. The sacred carp that fill the pool today are centuries old by tradition, and the surrounding mosque complex gives the city center its most spiritually charged atmosphere.

17:00 - Transfer back to your hotel after the tour.

Overnight stay in Sanliurfa.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:00 - Pick up from your hotel for the museums before departing Sanliurfa toward Gaziantep. The transfer to Gaziantep takes about 2 hours.

• Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum and Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum: The Sanliurfa museum complex is one of the most significant in the region, housing the Gobeklitepe collection with original carved pillars and artifacts from the excavation site alongside a remarkable floor mosaic collection from the Roman-era city of Edessa. Visiting the museum directly after Gobeklitepe creates an unusually powerful narrative arc from prehistory to classical antiquity.
• Zeugma Mosaic Museum: The Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep is one of the largest mosaic museums in the world, holding an extraordinary collection rescued before the rising waters of the Birecik Dam submerged much of the ancient city. The celebrated “Gypsy Girl” mosaic and the room-scale mythological compositions are among the finest surviving examples of Roman decorative art.
• Gaziantep Old Town, Castle Exterior, and Baklava Culture: Gaziantep is consistently ranked among the world's great food cities, and the old town around the citadel brings together Ottoman-era hans, bazaars, and copper workshops with a pistachio culture that has defined the city's culinary identity for centuries. The castle's exterior panorama frames the old city quarter beautifully from above.

17:00 - The tour ends and you will be transferred to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Gaziantep.

Meal: Breakfast

After breakfast, depart Gaziantep and continue by road toward Cappadocia. This is the natural bridge day between the southeastern cities and central Anatolia. The journey takes about 5 hours.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:30 - Pick up from your hotel. This morning is also the best opportunity for an optional hot air balloon flight before the tour begins.

• Red Valley: Ancient Cappadocians left very few written records about Red Valley specifically, but its proximity to cave settlements suggests it was used as a natural corridor between communities. The valley's narrow passages and tall walls would have offered cover for travelers moving between Cavusin, Goreme, and Urgup on foot.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): Rose Valley's pinkish rock is composed primarily of compacted volcanic tuff with a higher calcium carbonate content than the harder basalt formations found elsewhere in Cappadocia. This softer composition made Gulludere's cliffs particularly easy to carve, which explains the high concentration of rock-cut spaces clustered in this one valley.
• Cavusin Village: Much of old Cavusin village is now structurally unstable, with sections of cliff face periodically slipping away and exposing previously interior rooms to the open air. Some areas are fenced off as a result, but the accessible sections still give a vivid picture of how cliff communities organized their daily lives in carved rock spaces.
• Pigeon Valley: Travelers who visit Pigeon Valley as part of the Yellow Tour typically see it from a viewpoint rather than walking its full length, which still gives a clear sense of the canyon scale and carved cliff character. Those with time to spare can descend into the valley and walk a section of the trail, which provides a completely different and more intimate perspective from ground level.
• Underground City: Most visitors to Cappadocia's underground city comment on how quickly the experience shifts from curiosity to genuine claustrophobic awareness as the tunnel ceiling drops and passage walls narrow. This physical response is appropriate, since the deliberate discomfort of the design was engineered to protect the community inside from the greater danger lurking above.

17:00 - Transfer back to your hotel after the tour.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:30 - Pick up from your hotel for the second Cappadocia touring day along the classic north route.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): In contrast to Pasabag's tall, dramatic fairy chimneys, Devrent Valley's formations are shorter, wider, and more varied in shape. That variety is precisely what makes Devrent memorable: no two columns look the same, and the landscape rewards patient observation.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: Pasabag's site includes fragments of fresco visible inside one of the accessible cave chapels, though the paintings are faint compared to Goreme Open Air Museum's more famous examples. They are worth examining closely because the setting, inside a fairy chimney rather than a carved cliff, is unique.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Wheel-throwing at Avanos is surprisingly accessible for first-time participants: the instructor guides your hands through the basic centering and pulling steps, and most visitors produce a recognizable shape within five minutes. What feels impossible in the first thirty seconds usually clicks quickly.
• Goreme Panoramic View: Goreme Panoramic View marks a natural midpoint in the Red Tour day, coming after the northern valley stops and before the museum sites. The brief pause at height gives travelers a moment to orient themselves and prepare for the second half of the itinerary.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: Autumn visits to Zelve benefit from lower light angles that emphasize the texture of the carved stone surfaces and add depth to the facade photographs. Spring visits find the valley floor greener and softer in tone. Both seasons produce better visual results than the flat midday light of a peak summer visit.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): Uchisar Castle is Cappadocia's highest natural rock formation, rising approximately sixty meters above the surrounding plateau and visible from nearly every part of the region. Centuries of carving have left its face studded with hundreds of windows and passages at every level, making it look as much built as grown.

17:00 - Transfer back to your hotel after the tour.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia.

Meal: Breakfast

Breakfast at the hotel and check-out from your rooms.

According to your flight time, we will transfer you to Kayseri or Nevsehir Airport. You may have a direct flight or a flight via Istanbul, depending on flight availability on the date of travel.

Upon your arrival at Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport, we will welcome you at the exit and transfer you to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

07:30 - Pick up from your hotel for the full-day drive to Pamukkale.

• Pamukkale: Denizli province holds one of Turkey's most surprising landscapes: a brilliant white hillside called Pamukkale. Thermal water rich in calcium carbonate has been flowing down this slope for thousands of years, building up smooth travertine terraces and shallow pools. UNESCO recognized the site in 1988, pairing it with the ancient Greco-Roman city that once thrived here.
• White Calcium Terraces: Pamukkale's thermal springs emerge with enough mineral content to turn rock bright white within decades; over thousands of years they have shaped an entire hillside. The cascading calcium terraces form naturally as water overflows ledge after ledge, cooling slightly with each step down the slope. Managed conservation zones now rotate water flow across different sections to keep the travertine white and healthy.
• Hierapolis Ancient City: Hierapolis holds one of the most striking ancient theaters in Turkey, cut directly into the hillside above Pamukkale with views out over the white travertine terraces. The theater seated up to 15,000 spectators in its prime, and sections of the ornate stage building are still standing. Combined with the city's colonnaded streets and temples, this Greco-Roman site offers several hours of serious exploration.
• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: Mineral water, submerged archaeology, and a Roman imperial legend combine at Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool in Hierapolis. The pool temperature holds at 36 degrees year-round thanks to Pamukkale's thermal springs, and the floor holds genuine Roman marble columns deposited by earthquake centuries ago. Entry is not included in the tour and is paid on-site, this is an optional extra for travelers who want to make the most of the thermal bathing tradition.

16:00 - Transfer back to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk after the tour.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:45 - Pick up from your hotel for the morning Ephesus program.

• Ephesus Ancient City: Hadrian's Temple, tucked along Curetes Street in Ephesus, is small compared to the Great Theatre or the Library, but its carved arch and detailed friezes make it one of the most elegant structures in the ancient city. The faces of Medusa and Tyche carved above the doorway have survived centuries remarkably well. Your guide can explain the symbolism behind each figure, turning a quick stop into a memorable lesson.
• House of Virgin Mary: Spring water flows from a small fountain at the House of Virgin Mary, believed by many pilgrims to have healing properties. Visitors queue to fill small bottles from the fountain and carry the water home as a keepsake from the pilgrimage site. Whether or not you share the faith, the ritual is a meaningful part of understanding why this place matters to so many people.
• Temple of Artemis: Among all the stops on an Ephesus day tour, the Temple of Artemis may be the one that most rewards intellectual engagement over visual spectacle. There is not much to look at, one column, a shallow marshy field, some storks. But the story of what stood here, why it was built, and how it was lost carries enough historical weight to fill an entire afternoon of conversation. A guide who loves this site makes all the difference.

16:00 - The tour ends and you will be transferred to Izmir Airport.

20:30 - Flight to Istanbul from Izmir Airport. (Flight time may change.)

21:45 - Arrival in Istanbul and transfer to your hotel. (Arrival time may change according to availability.)

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast

This day is free in Istanbul. It works well for neighborhoods, shopping, museums, or simply slowing the rhythm after the long cross-country section.

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast

You will have a slower morning in Istanbul before the afternoon cruise departure.

13:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the pier.

• Bosphorus Cruise: The cruise from the European shore covers roughly fifteen kilometers of waterway, passing under the suspension bridges and alongside the forests that line the upper strait before turning back. It is the geographic perspective on Istanbul that completes what two days of street-level touring cannot show.
• Dolmabahce Palace: Seen from the water, Dolmabahce presents its full 600-meter Bosphorus facade, the longest palace waterfront in Europe, built in 1856 as the Ottomans' attempt to match European architectural ambition. The detail of the coastal gates and fountains reads clearly from the boat.
• Ortakoy Mosque and Bridge: The Baroque waterfront mosque at Ortakoy, framed by the first Bosphorus suspension bridge directly behind it, has become one of the most reproduced images of Istanbul. From the cruise boat, the framing is perfect.
• Rumeli Fortress: Built in four months in 1452 by Mehmed II to control Bosphorus traffic in preparation for his siege of Constantinople, Rumeli Fortress still stands in near-complete condition. Viewed from the water, its strategic purpose along the narrowest point of the strait is immediately obvious.

16:00 - Transfer back to your hotel after the cruise.

Overnight stay in Istanbul.

Meal: Breakfast

According to your international flight details, we will arrange your hotel transfer to Istanbul Airport or Sabiha Gokcen Airport. Your 16-day journey across Turkey comes to an end.