Büyükada has banned the private car for generations — the loudest sounds on its lanes are bicycle bells and, until recently, hooves. The largest of the Princes' Islands, it grew as a summer refuge for Istanbul's Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Levantine families, who raised extravagant timber mansions among the pines. Two wooded hills crown it: one holds the abandoned Prinkipo orphanage, once the largest wooden building in Europe; the other lifts the whitewashed monastery of Aya Yorgi. Leon Trotsky passed four exiled years here, writing in a rented house above the shore.
Today you step off the ferry into a town of faded belle-époque facades, then head uphill as the streets surrender to shade, resin and glimpses of sea. Pilgrims still climb the steep track to Aya Yorgi, some unspooling a single thread the whole way while they hold a wish. Electric shuttles have taken over from the old horse-drawn phaetons, and swimmers slip into rocky coves below the pines. The grand houses grow quiet each winter, then every spring the island fills again with day-trippers, the ring of bicycles, and the smell of salt.