Fener – Balat Tour

Our first visit is to an extraordinary Sveti Stefan Bulgarian Church, the only church in the whole world which made completely steel.

Then we pass onto Balat, walking through the splashes of color and the vibrancy of its street life, the crisscross of washing lines on the crumbling buildings, the synagogues, the churches, and the labyrinth of cobblestone streets teeming with kids playing football and women in headscarves beating rugs. We believe that all your Instagram friends will be mesmerized by your photos in the Balat neighborhood.

The rest of the tour will be in Fener, where we see the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate housing a column which is believed to have been used for the binding and flogging of Jesus in Jerusalem. Greek Orthodox College will welcome us in all its glory. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Church is an essential part of this tour because it’s the most sacred site for all of the 300 million Orthodox people in the world. We talk about why Mehmet II, who conquered Constantinople, let the site stay in Istanbul. What is its importance in the Christian world? How are they equal to the Catholic church? We learn this and much more.

At the end of the tour, we take a ferry from Fener pier to Karaköy with the view of the Golden Horn.

*We will have lunch at a nice restaurant (optional and not included)