Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarayi) Tours and Tickets - page 2
13,421 reviews
Beautiful yet eerie, Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarayi) isn’t your average underground well. Dating back to the Byzantine era, the huge cistern was built in the mid-500s on the former site of a basilica. More than 300 marble columns provide a grand, serene atmosphere to what was essentially subterranean water storage.
We completely misread the meeting point of the tour and missed our time slot. The tour company was fantastic when my husband called and they just said no worries--go on the next hour. This kind of customer service is superb and greatly appreciated (we also lucked out that the next hour wasn't fully booked!). I loved that we had a guide who explained the Basilica Cistern to us before we explored so we knew exactly which pillars to look at.
Very competent and nice guide.
We really enjoied the visit. Help Washington available for questione and gave us a lot of additional i firmation. Very helpful
Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and very professional. He gave us a lot of interesting information and facts about the cisterns. Absolutely must get skip the line tickets, unless you want to stay in line for an hour or more.
Furkan and Can were fantastic guides and very open to making changes to suit our needs.
They took us to two fantastic local restaurants in addition to the rest of the tour.
We would surely use them next time we visit Türkiye and would give them 6 stars if we could.
Really helpful being able to skip the line and hear the history of the cistern before visiting it. Not easy to hear all the information, but that’s only because it was really busy. Fantastic place to visit and a must do when in Istanbul.
We loved this tour. Our guide, Muhammet İşin, did a fantastic job setting the historical context of the Basilica Cistern. It is a breathtaking way to spend an hour or so in Istanbul. We highly recommend the experience.
We were able to see everything in one day with plenty of time in each place. Our tour guide Lütfullah was very knowledgeable and friendly. He offered to change our tour to the following day as we were jet lagged. We enjoyed it and highly recommend taking the tour with Lütfullah.
I wish I could give more that 5 stars!!! Furkan is amazing. We had a blast with him. He is so knowledgable and passionate about the history of Istanbul. He spent time understanding what we were interested and tailored our time to that. And, he’s a GREAT photographer!!! We’ll definitely book with him on our next visit to Istanbul.