Pierre Loti Hill

Pierre Loti Hill sits above the Eyüpsultan district on the European side of Istanbul, overlooking the Golden Horn waterway. It's named after the French novelist Julien Viaud, who wrote under the pen name Pierre Loti and was famously enchanted by Istanbul in the late 19th century. According to local tradition, he would sit here for hours gazing at the city, and the hilltop café that now bears his name has become one of Istanbul's most beloved viewpoints — a place where residents and visitors alike come to slow down, drink tea, and stare at one of the world's great urban panoramas.

The experience is genuinely simple and all the better for it. You reach the hill either by cable car (teleferik) from the waterfront, which is a pleasure in itself, or by walking up through the streets of Eyüpsultan. At the top, the Pierre Loti Kahvesi — a traditional Turkish coffee house — serves çay, Turkish coffee, and snacks on a terrace overlooking the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus in the distance, and the minarets of the Eyüp Sultan Mosque below. The view at dusk, when the city turns amber and the mosques light up, is the kind of thing people remember for years.

Eyüpsultan is one of Istanbul's most devout and historically significant neighbourhoods — pilgrims come to visit the tomb of Eyüp Sultan, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, so the area has a quieter, more reflective atmosphere than the tourist-dense old city. Combining a visit to the mosque and tomb complex at the bottom of the hill with the cable car ride up and tea at the summit makes for a perfect half-afternoon that feels genuinely off the tourist trail, even though it's well known to those in the know.