The best morning on the Golden Horn costs a ferry ticket and ends on a shore almost nobody in Istanbul crosses to. Hasköy sits five minutes by water from Balat, and the crowds photographing painted houses over there rarely make the trip.
On this side: a synagogue built half below ground by a community that rejects the Talmud, a sultan’s pavilion named after Venetian mirrors, an anchor foundry that became Turkey’s first industrial museum, and a hillside of 22,000 graves with a motorway cut through it.
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Byzantine Vineyards & Imperial Tents
The gradient explains why people settled here first.
From the 5th and 6th centuries, Byzantine aristocrats built summer houses on these vine-covered slopes, high above the whole length of the Golden Horn.
Walk up from the shore today and your calves register the same slope.
By the 16th century locals had put themselves under the protection of the Holy Martyr Paraskevi, and one meaning of the modern name follows that thread: Agia Paraskevi to Parasköy to Hasköy.
The other reading is imperial. Has means belonging to the sultan, and after 1453 the village became a royal preserve, with local memory insisting the army of Mehmed II pitched its tents here.
A stone pillar in the courtyard of the Handan Ağa Mosque marks the spot, unsigned and easy to walk straight past.
Eleven Jewish Quarters on One Slope
For four centuries this hill held more Jewish life than anywhere else in the city.
Mehmed II invited Jewish communities to the north bank of the Golden Horn in 1453, and in 1492 Sephardim expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived under Bayezid II. Hasköy and Balat faced each other as the two great Jewish neighbourhoods of Istanbul until the mid-20th century, and Hasköy held the larger and wealthier population.
The longer version of that arrival runs through why Jews migrated to the Ottoman Empire.
Evliya Çelebi counted eleven Jewish quarters here in the 17th century, beside two Greek, one Armenian and one Muslim, with a Jewish population of around 11,000 — plus 50 tanneries, 100 taverns and a well-known beach. Moses Hamon, born around 1490 into a family from Granada, went from this shore to become court physician to Süleyman the Magnificent.
“A beautiful spot with good air.” Evliya Çelebi on Hasköy, 17th century
The Karaites & Their Sunken Synagogue
You step down into this synagogue rather than up.
The Karaites, or Karaim, follow scripture and reject the oral law of the Talmud, and their tradition puts the prayer hall partly below ground. Their synagogue, Kal ha Kadoş be Kuşta Bene Mikra on Hasköy Caddesi, still holds services, rebuilt in the 18th century after a fire. Mahmud II granted them a cemetery of their own, still the only working Karaite burial ground in Istanbul.
They came here by imperial decision. In 1597, when work began on the Yeni Camii at Eminönü on land the Karaites held, around forty families moved to Hasköy with lifetime tax exemption. Working synagogues take no walk-in visitors, so seeing the inside means arranging it ahead, a call we make for guests.
The Maalem Synagogue & Its Ship
More than thirty synagogues once stood on this hillside. Two still hold prayers.
The Maalem Synagogue of 1754, on Harap Çeşme Sokak, is the one worth the climb: marble columns, a painted dome, a wooden aron edged in gilt mouldings, and a tevah built in the shape of a ship’s hull — a reading platform designed by people whose living came off the water below.
Across the water at Balat, the Ahrida Synagogue keeps its own boat-shaped tevah and gets the visitors, the photographs and the restoration money, with the Yanbol Synagogue a few streets behind it. Seeing both shores in one day, five minutes apart by ferry, tells you more about what happened to Jewish Istanbul than either does alone.
Camondo's School & the Great Cemetery
Abraham Salomon de Camondo; banker, philanthropist, one of the founders of the modern municipality, opened a school in Hasköy in 1858 that taught Jewish students a Western curriculum, among the first in the empire to do so. Traditionalists fought him bitterly over it.
He died in Paris in 1873 and asked to come home; his neo-Gothic mausoleum stands in the cemetery on the hill above.
That cemetery is the oldest Jewish burial ground in European Turkey. The community received the land in 1582, some headstones date from the 15th century, and roughly 22,000 graves cover the slope. The O-1 ring road runs straight through the middle of it. Standing at the guardrail with traffic below and 15th-century Hebrew lettering behind you is the strongest ten minutes in the neighbourhood.
The wider story of these families sits in Jewish Istanbul and our Judeo-Christian heritage itinerary.
Red Minaret Street & Aya Paraskevi
The street sign gives the game away: Kırmızı Minare Sokak, Red Minaret Street.
The minaret belongs to the Kiremitçi Ahmed Çelebi Mosque of 1455–56. Its builders used the red brick of a district that fired tiles and pottery from the Byzantine period into the 20th century.
The Greek Orthodox church of Aya Paraskevi answers them a few streets away. The Wallachian prince Constantin Brâncoveanu paid for its rebuild in 1692, and inside, four imperial icons survive from the Byzantine church that stood here before, with an Armenian quarter and church for neighbours.
Within a fifteen-minute walk you cross four faiths.
Aynalıkavak: The Mirrored Poplar Pavilion
Hand-painted panels, mother-of-pearl inlay, poetry running along the walls, a garden that drops away to the water. This is the only Ottoman garden pavilion of its kind left standing on the Golden Horn.
The shore below Hasköy was the Tersâne-i Âmire, the imperial shipyard, and the cypress grove above it the Shipyard Garden. Building started in 1613 under Ahmed I, and the result, the Tersane Sarayı, grew into the largest waterfront palace on this shore. Great Venetian mirrors, a diplomatic gift, gave it the name Aynalıkavak, the mirrored poplar.
History happened in these rooms: the Treaty of Aynalıkavak, which settled the Crimean question between the Ottoman and Russian empires for a while, carries the date 10 March 1779. Selim III, who reigned from 1789 to 1807, gave the surviving pavilion its present shape and made it a house of Turkish classical music. The ground floor now holds more than 70 Turkish instruments, run as a museum.
The rest of the great palace is gone, unlike the better-known Ottoman palaces of Istanbul. Alone, you get a handsome empty room with the mirrors missing; with a guide you get the poetry on the walls read out loud.
The pavilion is named after mirrors it no longer contains, and stands in a garden built for a shipyard that no longer builds ships. Nearly everything in Hasköy is named for something that has left.
From Anchor Foundry to Museum Ship
You can walk through a submarine here, then climb the deck of a ferry your grandparents’ generation commuted on.
The Lengerhane, the foundry that cast anchors and chain for the imperial shipyard, went up under Ahmed III between 1703 and 1730 on 12th-century Byzantine foundations. In 1861 the ferry company Şirket-i Hayriye built its own yard here, and tanneries, ropeworks and dye houses filled in behind the harbour.
The Rahmi M. Koç Museum grew out of exactly those two buildings: the foundation restored the Lengerhane and opened Turkey’s first industrial museum in 1994, with the Hasköy shipyard joining in 2001. Three sections cover around 27,000 m²: vintage cars and trams, a recreated period street of shops, the B-24 Liberator bomber Hadley’s Harem, the ferry Fenerbahçe, the submarine TCG Uluçalireis and the Turgut Alp crane.
Families who expect an hour here routinely lose three, which is why we build the day around it rather than after it. Compare notes across the water at Santral Istanbul, the power station that became a museum.
- Published hours: Tuesday to Friday 09:30–17:00, Saturday and Sunday 10:00–19:00, closed Mondays. Seasonal changes happen, so check before you go.
- Time needed: Two to three hours for the museum alone, half a day with the neighbourhood walk.
- Best pairing: The museum in the morning, Aynalıkavak Kasrı after lunch, both on the same shore.
- Tickets: Current museum prices are in our 2026 entrance fees guide.
One Slow Shore
See the Whole Golden Horn in a Single Private Day
The submarine, the mirrored pavilion, the sunken synagogue and the shore nobody else walks; our full-day Golden Horn tour threads them together, with a car for the hills and a guide who has the keys to the conversation. Tell us your dates and we will build the day around your pace.
What the Bridge Took Away
Hasköy lost its people in instalments, and each one has a date.
Fire took around 500 houses in 1804, cholera came through three times between 1865 and 1913, and people who could leave, left.
A wooden bridge, 380 metres long in an 1852 record, the Jewish Bridge to everyone local, joined this shore to Balat and made the two quarters one community; it is gone. Around 25,000 Jews still lived here in the early 20th century, and after 1948 they moved out fast, to Israel and to Şişli and Nişantaşı.
Then the machines arrived. In 1974 the Haliç Bridge and its ring road wiped out the Halıcıoğlu neighbourhood and sliced the cemetery in two. Renewal has hit harder here than at Balat or Fener.
Told badly, that reads as a lament. Told well, it reads as evidence. Our guides work this shore with the dates, the families and the street names in their heads, which is why an afternoon that feels melancholy alone feels like detective work in company.
The Difference Is Who Walks With You
Read the Stones With Someone Who Can Read Them
Told badly, a hillside of 22,000 graves is a lament; told well, it is evidence. Our licensed guides work this shore with the dates, the families and the street names in their heads, and we make the phone calls that open locked synagogue doors. Send an inquiry, mention Hasköy, and we will match you with the right guide.
Piri Paşa Lanes & New Shipyards
Laundry lines still cross the steep lanes of Piri Paşa, and lunch at Lokanta comes out of trays behind glass, ordered by pointing.
This is ordinary working Istanbul: small shops, a few cafés, cats on the walls, nobody selling anything to a visitor. Along the same shore you reach Halıcıoğlu, then Sütlüce with Miniatürk, and then Eyüp at the head of the water.
Our full-day Golden Horn tour threads all of it together, with a car for the hills.
The water itself is changing fastest. Tersane İstanbul, also called Haliçport, is rebuilding 242,000 m² of the old yards into hotels, museums, marinas and a shore promenade, opening in phases
Come this season and you walk past cranes and hoardings; come next year and half of what you saw will be a different place.
How to Visit Hasköy Well
- Getting There: The Haliç ferry line, Üsküdar to Eminönü to Eyüp, stops at Hasköy pier. Arriving by water beats every other option and costs a city transport fare.
- By Bus: Buses 47, 47E and 47Ç leave Eminönü; get off at Kırmızı Minare, right by the red brick minaret.
- By Metrobus: Ride to Halıcıoğlu and walk downhill to the shore. Uphill on the return is steep, so plan the direction.
- Terrain & Pace: The lanes climb hard. With grandparents, small children or a stroller, a private car between the cemetery, the pavilion and the museum removes the whole problem.
- Hours: Check the Rahmi M. Koç Museum and Aynalıkavak Kasrı before you set out; both change with the season, and Mondays close the museum.
- Synagogue Access: The two working synagogues need arranging in advance. We handle those requests as part of the day.
- Safety: This is a quiet residential quarter, as safe as anywhere else in the city. Our overview on travelling safely in Turkey covers the wider question.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Off The Beaten Path with The Other Tour
A ferry deck at nine in the morning, a red brick minaret at the top of the lane, cypresses over 22,000 graves and a submarine tied up where the sultan’s anchors were cast. Hasköy gives you the Golden Horn the tour buses drive past on their way somewhere else, and it works best as a slow, private day with someone who knows which door opens and which stone matters.
Most guests take this shore as our full-day Golden Horn tour, which puts Hasköy, the cemetery, the pavilion and the museum in one private day with the transportation for the hills; or name the thread, Jewish Istanbul, industrial heritage, the Istanbul nobody else walks, and we rebuild the day around it.
Send us your dates: we arrange access where access needs arranging, handle the ferry, the transportation and the tickets, and reply with a plan you can change freely. A person answers, usually within a day.
