Fener & Balat

Two old neighbourhoods on the Golden Horn's southern shore, packed tight between the Byzantine land walls and the water. Balat was the Jewish quarter, Fener the Greek one, and both wear their layered history on the street: steep lanes of narrow houses painted every colour, a Greek Orthodox patriarchate still functioning behind high walls, synagogues and churches and mosques within a few minutes of each other. In the last decade the colour drew the cameras, and the murals came — Balat is now one of the city's densest street-art quarters, art applied straight onto the old façades. Up the hill at the edge of the walls stands the Kariye Mosque, the former Chora church, holding the finest Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul.