Spread across a wooded hillside above the Bosphorus in the Sariyer district, Emirgan Park is one of the largest and best-loved public parks in Istanbul, famous above all for its spectacular display of tulips each spring. The grounds were once a private estate, granted in the seventeenth century and passing through Ottoman noble and royal hands before being acquired by the city and opened to the public in the twentieth century, and three historic pavilions survive among the trees: the Yellow, the.....

When it opened in 2011 the Sapphire tower was the tallest building in Istanbul and among the tallest in Europe, and its observation deck near the top remains one of the highest public viewpoints in the city. Rising 261 metres in the Levent business district on the European side, the slender glass skyscraper was designed as a mixed development of luxury residences, a shopping mall and the viewing terrace, and was notable as the country's first ecological tower, wrapped in a double-skin facade tha.....