Top Things To Do in Winter in Istanbul

From about mid-December to mid-March, Istanbul settles into a proper winter. Daytime highs rarely climb past 10 or 11 degrees Celsius, and at night it drops to around 4 or 5, so you feel the cold off the water. There are bright, sharp blue days, but the sky is grey more often than not, and December and January are the wettest months of the year. Pack a waterproof. Life does not slow down for any of this. The central districts like Nişantaşı and Beyoğlu stay busy, while the shores of the Bosphorus go quiet and a little melancholic, which is exactly when I like them best.

Honestly, this is one of my favourite times to visit. The tourist crowds thin out, so you can stand in front of the city’s great monuments and museums without queueing for an hour. Istanbul also takes on a moody, cinematic charm in the cold, and most years the city gets at least one week of snow. It rarely lasts long, but a snow-dusted skyline of domes and minarets is the kind of thing photographers will get up at dawn for.

So here is my list of the things actually worth doing once the temperature drops.

Eat fish and drink rakı

The Bosphorus fishing season really kicks off at the end of September, and the cold months are when you find the widest variety and the best quality. Two to look for: lüfer (bluefish), a Bosphorus classic that locals get genuinely passionate about, and kalkan (turbot), which looks odd on the slab but is one of the finest fish you will eat anywhere. To stay warm, pair the meal with rakı, the anise spirit that is Turkey’s national drink and tastes a lot like pastis. You drink it slowly, cut with water and ice until it turns milky white, alongside meze and fish.

The whole ritual is called a rakı sofrası, a long table dinner where people eat, drink and argue about everything for hours. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic, was famous for holding these evenings with his advisors and friends, and the tradition is alive and well today. For where to go, my guide to the best fish and meze restaurants in Istanbul covers my picks, and there are plenty of Bosphorus restaurants with a view if you want the water in the frame even on a grey day.

Drink salep or boza

Salep and çay are the two hot drinks that define a Turkish winter, and both go back to Ottoman times. Salep is made from salep powder (ground from the root of a wild orchid) whisked into hot milk and dusted with cinnamon. During the Ottoman era it was drunk across the empire and even reached England and Germany, where it was a cheaper alternative to coffee. You will find it today in cafés and from street vendors all over the city. Çay, the small tulip glass of black Turkish tea, is the other constant, poured at every excuse.

Then there is boza, the strange and wonderful one. It is a thick, fermented drink made from grains (millet, wheat or bulgur), sugar and yogurt cultures, sometimes with a hint of vanilla, fermented over about five days. It is a winter-only drink, traditionally sold from roughly mid-September to mid-May, and street vendors still walk the neighbourhoods at dusk calling out “Boozaa, boozaa!” so you hear them before you see them.

The most famous place to try it is Vefa Bozacısı in the Vefa district. It opened in 1876, which makes it close to 150 years old, and it is the oldest boza shop still running in the city. They serve the boza thick and mild, topped with roasted chickpeas and cinnamon, in a beautiful old room of tiled walls, wooden counters and glass lamps. Atatürk drank here in the 1930s, and the glass he used is still on display behind glass of its own. Walking in genuinely feels like stepping back a century. If you want more of these old-fashioned classics, my round-up of traditional Turkish drinks to try has the full list.

Go to the hammam

After a cold morning of walking the city, nothing beats thawing out in a Turkish bath under the marble heat and the hands of a skilled tellak. This is the winter activity I push hardest on visitors. A few historic ones I trust:

• Kılıç Ali Paşa Hamamı, in Tophane, dates to 1580 and reopened after a long, award-winning restoration that turned it into something closer to a luxury spa than a public bath. Service is excellent. At the time of writing a traditional bath, scrub and foam massage runs in the rough range of 2,000 to 4,000 TL depending on the package. The one catch is that men and women use separate time slots (women’s hours in the morning, men’s in the afternoon and evening), so check before you turn up.
• Çağaloğlu Hamamı, built in 1741 near Sultanahmet, is the grand old name with a guest list that supposedly includes Florence Nightingale and Kaiser Wilhelm II. It keeps separate men’s and women’s sections so couples can go at the same time, and English-speaking staff are easy to find. A traditional package sits in roughly the same price band.
• Süleymaniye Hamamı, beside the Süleymaniye Mosque and built in 1557 by the architect Sinan, is the one to pick if you want mixed hours and to bathe together as a couple or family.

If you want the full breakdown with more addresses and price tiers, see my dedicated guide to the best hammams in Istanbul. Book ahead for any of these in high season or on a wet weekend.

Shopping and cinema

When the rain sets in sideways, one easy move is to retreat into one of Istanbul’s giant shopping centres, most of which have modern multiplex cinemas, several with IMAX and 3D screens. The good news for visitors: foreign films are almost always shown in the original language with Turkish subtitles, so you can actually follow them. For where to go, my Istanbul shopping centres guide covers the malls worth your time.

And while you are out, grab a drink in a good neighbourhood

If you are around Nişantaşı, stop for a coffee or a cocktail on Atiye Sokak or up around Akkavak and Teşvikiye. After 6 or 7pm the bars fill up. It is a polished, see-and-be-seen part of town, and on a cold night the warm, crowded rooms are half the appeal. Bar scenes shift fast here, so check what is currently open before you commit.

Visit the museums

When the weather rules out the open-air sights, this is when Istanbul’s museums earn their keep. There is something for every taste. My top pick for a rainy winter afternoon, especially with kids, is the Rahmi M. Koç Museum on the Golden Horn, a brilliant industrial and transport museum where you can climb into old planes, walk through trams and trains, and actually go inside a real World War II submarine moored outside. Santral Istanbul, set in a converted power station, splits between contemporary art and a hands-on energy section. The Military Museum holds a huge collection running from the Ottoman conquest to the present, and the afternoon Mehter band performance is a treat if the timing lines up. For more options, my Istanbul museum guide ranks the ten I would prioritise.

Visit the aquarium

Istanbul’s aquarium out in Florya is a genuinely good rainy-day plan, especially for families. It opened in 2011, claims to be the world’s largest themed aquarium, and is home to more than 15,000 sea and land creatures, including sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks and giant rays. The route runs about 1.2 km through 16 themed geographic zones, taking you from the Black Sea all the way to the Pacific and the Amazon, and through a long underwater tunnel with sharks and rays gliding overhead.

Beyond the tanks there are feeding sessions and 5D film projections, and a few restaurants on site, so you can easily spend most of a day there. It sits inside the Aqua Florya shopping centre on the European side, a bit out from the centre but well worth the trip. Full details and how to get there are in my write-up of the Istanbul Aquarium at Aqua Florya.

Go to a café and play tavla

Spend any cold afternoon in an Istanbul café and you will see people hunched over a tavla (backgammon) board, dice clattering, tea glasses emptying. It is close to a national obsession. If you want to learn, just ask the waiters, they will happily set up the pieces and walk you through the basic rules, and you can usually ask to play cards too. It is the most local way I know to wait out a rainy hour.

For a bigger games session, head to the Cihangir district, the artsy, slightly bohemian quarter above Cihangir’s steep streets, where cafés mix traditional Turkish games with pool tables and the occasional ping-pong room. Cihangir is a lovely neighbourhood to wander even in the cold, all antique shops, bookshops and cats. To round out a winter trip, my list of the best things to do in Istanbul keeps you busy whatever the sky is doing.