Balat and Fener: colourful houses and the Orthodox Patriarchate

Balat and Fener lie side by side on the south shore of the Golden Horn, in the Fatih district, between the Atatürk Bridge and the walls at Ayvansaray. Fener, the old Phanar, has been home to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople since the early 17th century; Balat was for a long time the city's Jewish quarter, with its synagogues and houses with overhanging upper floors. Both neighbourhoods can be explored on foot and for free: steep cobbled streets, painted façades, Orthodox churches and the cafés of Vodina Street. Allow half a day for the Patriarchate, the Bulgarian Church of St Stephen and the lanes that climb up to the Greek school. The area is lived-in and traditional: dress modestly and only photograph residents with their consent.

Highlights

The colourful streets of Balat

19th-century houses with pink, pale green or yellow façades line sloping streets and cobbled stairways. Kiremit Street (Kiremit Caddesi) and the streets around it have the most photographed façades; Vodina Street, at the bottom of the neighbourhood, is lined with cafés, second-hand shops and workshops. These are people's homes: stay on the street and do not block doorways.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of St George

The seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the honorary head of the Orthodox Churches, moved here around 1600. The Church of St George, a three-aisled basilica rebuilt in 1720 after a fire, keeps an 18th-century iconostasis, a walnut patriarchal throne inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, Byzantine mosaic icons and the so-called Column of the Flagellation of Christ. Since 2004 it has also held relics of St Gregory of Nazianzus and St John Chrysostom returned by Pope John Paul II. The central gate of the compound has stayed shut since Patriarch Gregory V was hanged there in 1821: you enter through a side door, after a security check.

The Bulgarian Church of St Stephen (the Iron Church)

On the waterfront, this Bulgarian Orthodox church consecrated in 1898 is made of cast-iron parts cast in Vienna and assembled on site, to plans by the architect Hovsep Aznavour. It replaced a wooden church where, in 1870, the Bulgarians were recognised as a separate religious community in the Ottoman Empire. Restored over several years, it reopened for worship and visits on 7 January 2018. As a place of worship, it can be visited without a ticket, quietly.

The Phanar Greek Orthodox College

At the top of the hill, this large red-brick building crowned with a dome, completed in 1883, towers over Fener and can be seen from all along the Golden Horn. It is still a working Greek school: it cannot be visited, but the lanes leading up to it from the Patriarchate give the best views of the building and the water.

The Ahrida Synagogue

Founded in the 15th century by Romaniote Jews from Ohrid, it is the oldest synagogue in Istanbul; its reading platform shaped like a ship's prow is famous. It can only be visited by booking at least three days ahead through the Jewish Museum of Turkey or an approved agency, as the official website of the Jewish community of Turkey states: on weekdays from 10am to 2pm, except on holidays, Friday afternoons and the Sabbath, passport required.

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