Balat and Fener are two old neighbourhoods stacked up the Golden Horn shore, for centuries shared by Istanbul's Greek, Jewish and Armenian families. Fener — from the Greek word for lantern — grew around the Greek Orthodox community and still holds the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the senior seat of the world's Orthodox Christians. Neighbouring Balat, named from the Greek for palace, became the city's main Jewish quarter after Sephardic refugees fled Spain in 1492. Those communities have dwindled to a few families, yet their churches, synagogues and timber houses remain, and the twisting lanes are now one of Istanbul's most photographed walks.
The pleasure here is the wandering. Streets climb in ribbons of pink, ochre and blue houses, past antique shops, cafés and street-art walls. Step off the famous corners and the crowds thin fast — laundry strung overhead, cats on every stair, children playing football against a crumbling Byzantine wall. The real monuments hide around the bends: a grand red-brick Greek college on the hilltop, a cast-iron Bulgarian church down by the water.