Turkey

Turkey is a destination that defies easy categorisation: at once Eastern and European, beach and cultural, ultra-modern and rooted in millennia of history. Across 783,000 km² (almost one and a half times France), the country unfurls a succession of civilisations whose remains intersect without merging: prehistoric at Göbekli Tepe (the oldest known temple in human history, 12,000 years old), Hittite in central Anatolia, Greek on the Aegean coast, Roman at Ephesus, Byzantine at Hagia Sophia, Ottoman across Anatolia and Thrace.

Istanbul, a 16-million-strong megalopolis, is the epicentre of that density. The city stretches across the Bosphorus, a strait that both separates and joins Europe and Asia — the only major metropolis in the world that literally straddles two continents. Hagia Sophia (537 AD, Byzantine basilica turned mosque turned museum turned mosque again in 2020), the Blue Mosque with its six minarets, the Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman sultans, the Grand Bazaar with its 4,000 shops — Istanbul concentrates such a density of treasures that a single week barely scratches the surface.

But Turkey is far more than its metropolis. Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, displays a volcanic landscape unique in the world: fairy chimneys carved by erosion, red and pink valleys, Byzantine rock-cut churches dug into tuff, underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli that could shelter 20,000 people. Sunrise hot-air balloons over Göreme are one of the iconic images of modern travel. The Aegean coast, from Pergamum to Bodrum, lines up exceptional archaeological sites — Ephesus and its Library of Celsus, Pergamum and its altar in Berlin, Aphrodisias and its marble sculptures — while the Turquoise Coast, from Marmaris to Antalya, is a string of beaches, coves and resorts bathed in intensely blue water. All this within a 3-4 hour flight from most European capitals, at a cost of living noticeably below Western Europe.