Bosphorus Bridge Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

Everyone calls it the Bosphorus Bridge. Officially it has been 15 July Martyrs Bridge since 2016, renamed after the failed coup. It opened in 1973 as the first fixed link between Europe and Asia.

The numbers

• Main span. 1,074 metres between towers that stand on dry land, nothing in the water.
• Clearance. 64 metres, set high enough for loaded ships to pass under.
• Traffic. Around 180,000 vehicles a day, most of them cars.
• Ends. Ortakoy on the European shore, Beylerbeyi on the Asian one.
• Lighting. Colour-changing LEDs since 2007, which is when the night photographs began.

You do not walk it

Pedestrians could cross for the first three years, and then could not. It is a motorway, so the bridge is something you pass under, cross by car or shoot from a distance. Nobody strolls it.

Where to see it from

• From the water. Every cruise passes beneath, and the long route carries on north past the wooden mansions to the fortress at Rumeli Hisari.
• From Ortakoy. The small mosque on the quay sits under the European tower. That is the postcard.
• From Beylerbeyi. The Asian shore gives the same composition from below, with the palace in it.
• From above. Helicopter circuits take in both older bridges and the whole strait at once.
• Cheapest of all. The public ferry north from Eminonu goes under it for the price of a bus ride.

Practical

• Rush hour. Crossings clog roughly seven to ten and five to eight, which matters if your transfer crosses.
• Sunset sailings. Evening cruises time their turn for the lighting, casting off about ninety minutes before dark.
• Ortakoy at weekends. The market fills the square, and the kumpir and waffle stalls are an institution.
• Wind. The strait funnels it. On deck in spring you want a jacket you would not bother with ashore.
• Which bridge. Three now cross the Bosphorus. Cruise routes mean this one and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet, not the motorway bridge far north.