Turkey Family Holidays & Breaks

Istanbul and Around with Kids

• Dive into cosmopolitan, manically busy Istanbul, the country’s biggest city; see our feature on an Istanbul city break with kids.

• Venture to the Sea of Marmara, a short ferry ride and easy day trip from Istanbul. The pretty, pine-coated Princes’ Islands, a summertime retreat for the Ottoman sultans, are car-free, with transport by horse and carriage. 

Beach Holidays in Turkey

• Head (along with most visitors to the country) for Turkey’s Aegean coast, which offers hundreds of kilometres of clear blue water, beaches of every kind, tourist resorts, secluded villages and a vast range of classical ruins.

• Alternatively, discover the hugely popular Mediterranean coast of Turkey, which offers more of the same delights.

Inland Turkey

• From Marmaris, where the Aegean and the Med meet, drive about three hours to Pamukkale or 'cotton castle’', famed for its hot springs and vast terraces of travertine, a white mineral left by the flowing water. It’s beside the ancient Roman spa city of Hierapolis, where you can see a well-preserved theatre and a 2km necropolis. Don’t miss the Antique Pool with its submerged Roman columns dating from an earthquake.

• Discover Turkey’s most extraordinary inland destination, Cappadocia, ’land of beautiful horses’ –a surreal landscape of conical rock outcrops or ‘fairy chimneys’ created by the erosion of hot volcanic ash thrown out by the eruption of Erciyes 30 million years ago. Early Christians carved troglodytic cities and churches out of the soft rock and decorated them with exquisite frescoes. The UNESCO-listed Göreme Valley has the greatest concentration of rock-cut chapels and monasteries in Cappadocia. Hot-air ballooning is a popular way to see this region. 

• Explore Mount Nemrut National Park to the east. On the mountain itself, 2,150m up, you can marvel at the huge stone heads of Greek and Persian gods.

• Swim in Lake Van further east – several times bigger than Lake Geneva and up to 400m deep, it has startling blue waters that reflect the mountain peaks. Kids adore the local breed of cat, which have one blue and one amber eye and love swimming in the lake.