Beşiktaş, Bebek & Bosphorus

This is the European shore of the Bosphorus, taken as one long ride up the water — from Beşiktaş, where the ferries churn and the fish market runs, north past Ortaköy and Bebek to Emirgan and the mouth of the Black Sea. The art is strung along it. Dolmabahçe Palace opens the stretch, six hundred metres of imperial Baroque on the waterline; further up, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum sits in a Bosphorus mansion at Emirgan; and at Rumelihisarı, the red-brick Perili Köşk holds Borusan Contemporary and its new-media collection. Between them: yalıs, mosques on the water, a fortress, the strait itself. The scale is horizontal. The Bosphorus organises everything.