Tracing steps in Istanbul, a heritage trail through the Turkish megacity

On a damp morning in Istanbul, I head for Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, a recently unveiled museum in a 500-year-old public bathhouse that once echoed with the chatter of the Ottoman middle classes. Getting there involves zigzagging through the winding cobbled streets of UNESCO-listed Zeyrek, which was a holy site 1,000 years ago, during the Byzantine Empire. There are few people out: only the odd chain-smoking vegetable vendor and some meandering octogenarians doing their grocery shopping. The air smells faintly of raw meat, thanks to the butchers that have long populated the neighbourhood. Trying to make sense of Google Maps on my phone, I almost collide with several men haphazardly carrying a sheep carcass from a van. I am lost. Or at least I think I am, until I realise that I’ve passed the hammam four or five times without noticing its domed façade. As happens so often in Istanbul, the past is staring right at me.

My first ever flight was to Turkey, aged six months, and I’ve visited Istanbul more times than I can count. I have hazy memories of summer trips to see relatives in the 1990s: spitting watermelon seeds into the Bosphorus with my cousins; crying on a stifling August day after being stung by a bee; brain freeze from a cherry dondurma ice cream; “Careless Whisper” on the taxi radio.

My father grew up in the southern city of Adana, where my grandfather Danış – a handsome man I knew only through photographs – was once the mayor. Dad left for London at 19 to train as an architect, but our family home is lined with photographs and ephemera collected by previous generations. Now 78, he says he still dreams in Turkish.

Yet even with all this living in my consciousness, I’ve never felt a tangible connection to this half of my identity. Growing up in central London in an English-speaking household, I looked at Turkey as a distant acquaintance I couldn’t quite place, even as the endless mispronunciations of my name kept me aware of my Turkishness. As a teenager in the wake of 9/11, I thought it seemed easier to be British than Turkish. Only in recent years have I learned that possessing a lineage to two places and two cultures is infinitely more interesting than one.

So I had come to Istanbul to get to know the country on my own terms, and to ask myself: who might I have become if my parents had chosen to settle in Turkey? In a country known for its dichotomies – old and new, conservative and liberal, east and west – there is a generation of millennials who, like me, are trying to figure out their relationship to this culture, even as they make their own mark on this multifaceted city. Perhaps, I thought, the answer might lie with them.

Istanbul has had a rough time since I last visited, in 2017. Besides the pandemic, the city has endured tense presidential and local elections, and the ripple effects of the devastating 2023 earthquake in southern Turkey. And yet it is full of promise: the 2018 opening of Istanbul Airport, the city’s second major aviation hub and now one of the world’s busiest, ushered in a new chapter. It was followed in 2021 by Galataport, a shiny shopping centre and cruise terminal, once populated mostly by fishermen and chestnut roasters, now home to the Renzo Piano-designed contemporary art museum Istanbul Modern and the new Peninsula Istanbul, inhabiting a collection of early-20th-century buildings with views onto centuries of Ottoman architecture.

The city is also evolving in subtler and more eccentric ways, often by re-examining its past. Zeyrek Çinili Hamam is a good example. After a 13-year restoration project, it now exhibits local and international artists alongside historical artefacts. It was recently also re-established as a functioning hammam for the neighbourhood – unusual in a city where so many such spaces are aimed at tourists.

“In 16th-century Ottoman society, hammams were gathering points where social identities or social class didn’t matter,” says Anlam Arslanoğlu de Coster, a curator at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, as we stroll through the intricately tiled women’s quarters. “In today’s Istanbul, the city is so massive, and so dispersed, that even within our communities, we don’t really have intimate spaces to gather.” Mementos of that earlier time were unearthed during the restoration process: remnants of Roman candles; shards of glassware; terracotta vessels; even an underground Byzantine cistern. “We forget how layered this city is,” says de Coster.

Later, I go to lunch at the popular restaurant Karaköy Lokantası with Mina Dilber, a former journalist at CNN Turkey and the founder of the joyful clothing and lifestyle brand Anim. As we graze on mince-stuffed courgettes, artichokes soaked in olive oil, and a rich lamb and tomato stew, she recounts a family history in textiles that goes back to Ottoman times. Dilber tells me how she became curious about her heritage. “I have it,” she says. “I know it. I should embrace it.”

We finish with a shallow bowl of kazandibi, a type of caramelised milk pudding, and an order of raki-infused lokum, also known as Turkish delight. Between bites of these sweet treats, Dilber scrutinises me for a second before asking, because of my last name, if I might be related to a friend of hers. And somehow, in a city of more than 15 million people, it turns out I am. She knows my cousin Defne. We agree to start a WhatsApp thread and get drinks the next night.

I’ve come to Istanbul to understand my roots, but while I’m here I meet people who are planting new ones. One evening, I zip past fluttering flags celebrating a century of Turkish independence to meet Anya von Bremzen, author of National Dish, a book that explores the relationship between national identity and food. She’s offered to take me on a tour of Little Syria, part of the historic Fatih neighbourhood. Approximately 3.3 million Syrians have crossed into Turkey since 2011, and more than 532,000 live in Istanbul. Anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise across Turkey, even as the new arrivals have begun making a cultural impact on their adopted home.

We spend a few hours traversing shops and restaurants displaying buckets of Syrian pistachios, vats of tahini, stacks of silver tea trays and baskets of dried roses. At the shoebox-sized Buuzecedi, which was transplanted straight from Damascus, an Arabic soap opera plays on the television as our Aleppo-born guide orders fatteh, a Levantine dish packed with crispy pitta bread, chickpeas, tahini and pistachios topped with ghee, along with a basket of falafel. You can find this dish in Syria, but also in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon; it transcends the artificial borders that were drawn and redrawn during and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I too have connections to Syria: my great-grandmother was born in Damascus; another ancestor was its governor.

Much of my family in this part of the world now live in Arnavutköy and Bebek, two tranquil, solvent neighbourhoods that creep up from the Bosphorus into the hills. The colourful wooden houses and fishing boats bobbing on the water take me straight back to the 1990s – to long hot afternoons filled with walks to the ice cream parlour with my dad and great uncle Korkut, who owned a talking parrot, and evenings spent running around with my cousins while the adults drank wine and smoked on the terrace of the family home.

Arnavutköy is also home to Rafael Indiana Cemo Çetin, a jewellery designer whose studio is a beautiful space inside an old Ottoman building with high ceilings and kilim rugs on wooden floorboards. Çetin, who starts his mornings by jumping into the Bosphorus for a swim (“like in Amalfi”), recently moved back to Istanbul to start his own brand after a stint as a filmmaker in New York. He bases his designs, which have been picked up by cult label Maryam Nassir Zadeh, on ancient coins he finds in the “underbelly” of the Grand Bazaar. He has these discoveries engraved by an artisan in Adana, near the epicentre of the 2023 quake. “One piece of jewellery goes through a life of processes,” he says.

Later, I have my drinks date with Dilber and my cousin at Bebek Hotel, a beloved and recently spruced-up 1950s property on the water. The early autumn weather is pleasantly cool, a breeze carrying the call to prayer below the hum of party boats. Inevitably we drink too much, and Dilber and I end up running late for dinner with her boyfriend, Fatih Tutak, who has promised to walk us through the menu at his new restaurant, Gallada, on the rooftop of The Peninsula. Rush hour traffic is at a standstill, so Dilber calls a water taxi. Suddenly, we’re flying along the Bosphorus, icons such as the Dolmabahçe Palace flashing by. Our driver keeps one hand on the wheel and the other on his phone.

Thirty-nine-year-old Tutak, the chef behind Turkey’s only two-Michelin-starred restaurant, has brought many traditional recipes into a fine-dining setting for the first time. His first restaurant, Turk Fatih Tutak, opened in 2019 to great acclaim, so Gallada has been very hyped. Dinner is a glitzy Istanbul night out with a crowd to match; the food an adventurous fusion of familiar Turkish flavours with far-flung inspiration from Tutak’s restaurant stints across Asia. It’s part ode to the Silk Road, part nod to The Peninsula’s Hong Kong connection. No good Turkish meal is complete without lamb, and there’s plenty of it here, from the shashlık kebab sprinkled with shavings of vinegar-soaked red onion to my favourite, the Adana kebab dumpling, an unexpected play on a classic southern dish that my dad grew up eating. There are other memorable bites too, including tiny skinless tomatoes soaked in yuzu and a warm medjool date cake laced with masala tea.

Tutak tells me he found himself drawn to what he describes as regional multiculturalism after a stint travelling across the country. “The same dish can be cooked in different villages, in the same region, in completely different styles,” he explains. “The world still has no clue about Turkish cuisine, and I’m only just discovering it right now. The more I travel around Turkey, the more I learn.”

Sanayi, an industrial neighbourhood filled with old car repair shops, feels a long way from the buzz of Gallada. In recent years, an artistic community has taken hold there, and Enis Karavil, a well-groomed interior designer in his 30s, has offered to take me on a tour of its studio spaces. Each appears to be in as much flux as Istanbul itself, filled with vast work-in-progress sculptures and chaotically stacked canvases, as well as unexpected pockets of quietude; in a pottery studio, a dog snoozes peacefully next to a wood-burning stove. Eventually we reach Sanayi313, the black-laquered concept store and gallery Karavil owns with his brother, Amir, where we eat lunch among antique-shop finds and the store’s furniture designs. As we part, Karavil splashes me with a dash of cologne by Etem Ruhi, founded more than a century ago by a local haberdasher and resurrected as a contemporary fragrance brand. It’s a characteristically Turkish gesture, I later learn, when hosting guests.

I spend one morning wandering the Çukurcuma district of Beyoglu, popping into tiny junk shops to sift through piles of old postcards and vintage ashtrays. I pause to pet a stray cat and realise, in a moment of kismet, that I am outside Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. It’s a companion piece to the Nobel-winning author’s novel of the same name, which charts its protagonist’s obsession with building a repository of memories to honour his first love – and the bygone city where they met. Housed in a tiny 19th-century building, it is a fictional museum of life in Istanbul. I can’t believe how familiar the photographs on display feel: men and women who look and dress like my grandparents, great uncles and great aunts in those black-and-white images at my parents’ house. Their sheer quantity, alongside film posters, trinkets and matchboxes, reminds me of my dad’s collection: the shoeboxes filled with snapshots; the EP he played drums on with his high school band. I’ve had the answers about my roots all along. I’ve grown up surrounded by them – just as my father intended.

Where to stay

The Peninsula Istanbul (doubles from about £645) arrived along the Bosphorus last year with a bang, thanks to its grand Bauhaus-era lobby, rooftop restaurant by Fatih Tutak and sleek interiors by Zeynep Fadıllıoğlu, who designed Istanbul’s carbon-neutral Şakirin Mosque. The 177 rooms have monochrome palettes, thick Tai Ping carpets and next-level tech, and the spa houses a marble hammam. More storied is Çırağan Palace Kempinski Istanbul (doubles from about £425). Built by a 17th-century sultan as a gift for his daughter, it remains an opulent place of plush red velvet, gilded details and marble.

Where to eat and drink

In a 1960s villa high up in the hills above waterside Bebek, Arkestra recently won its first Michelin star. The downstairs restaurant is pure Mad Men, with linden-wood-panelled walls and brown leather banquettes, but a new second dining room swings in the opposite direction, with cherry-red drapery and mirrored walls. After sampling small plates of grilled baby squid and beef sandos, diners can move to the listening room for cocktails and local DJs. For more classic food, Karaköy Lokantası has some of the best meze – locals go for a spread of dolma, lamb köfte and stuffed artichokes – and blue-tiled Pandeli, inside the Egyptian Bazaar, was awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2022 for its meze and comforting dishes such as spicy wood-fired chicken.

Where to shop

Istanbul is all about craftsmanship and local designers. Midnight in Bebek stocks cutting-edge labels, plus a curated jewellery collection. At A La Turca in bohemian Çukurcuma, each hand-woven kilim has been sourced and restored by owner Erkal Aksoy; there are ceramics and antiques too. Selim and Tuğçe Cenkel, proprietors of Marsel Delights in the district of Bomonti, specialise in tradition-bending, produce-driven lokum, in flavours such as sour cherry and mastic. They also sell a small range of lace place mats and ceramic blue eyes.