Istanbul

• 1 Hot spots and cool cafes on the Bosphorus
  A thousand scents and fragrances entice the traveler and a thousand more await you as you pause for a drink or a thick Turkish coffee on one of the numerous terraces overlooking the Canal. Here, exotic...

• 2 Pera Palace Hotel: the pearl of Istanbul
  Politicians, artists, writers and royalty have strolled through the halls of the magnificent hotel, a prominent symbol of Istanbul's urban culture for over a hundred years. Pera was the heart of the cosmopolitan...

• 3 Restoration works complete at the Hagia Sophia
  This major restoration project began back in 1993, a few years after the Hagia Sophia was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the rest of the historic centre of Istanbul. It wasn't ...

• 4 From Paris to Istanbul on the Orient Express
  Click on the image to see more photos of the legendary train and its journey to the historical Turkish city  

• 5 Sunsets over the Med: views to remember
  There may be no better spot on all the Mediterranean coast to watch the sun set than Cabo Sunion, a  vantage point which, from the dawn of history, has offered a view of the boats sailing towards...

• 6 Picasso's 'Vollard Suite' prints in Istanbul
  The exhibition of intaglio prints, which will be open to the public until April 18th, brings together a collection of one hundred prints by Pablo Picasso made between September 1930 and March 1937. The...

• 7 Four Seasons Istanbul: an escape to luxury
  Incredible though it sounds, this erstwhile prison, built in 1917, is a place you'd really want to escape to, not from. When you look a little closer, it makes more sense, as nothing has been left to chance...

• 8 Istanbul, Capital of Culture, 2010
  Although Ankara occupies the place in official records and literature, nobody doubts that the unofficial capital of Turkey is Istanbul - the city known to the  ancient Greeks, Persians and Macedonians...