Princes' Islands

These nine islands of the Sea of Marmara have provided various uses for the people of Istanbul over the years. Back in the days when the city was known as Constantinople, religious undesirables sought refuge here, while in the time of the sultans, the islands provided a convenient place to exile untrustworthy hangers-on. By the turn of the 18th century, well-heeled businessmen had staked their claim and built many of the Victorian gingerbread-style houses that lend the islands their charm. For several years in the 1930s, Büyükada, the largest of the islands, was the home of the exiled Leon Trotsky: the islands were considered to be safer than Istanbul, with its 35,000 hostile white Russian refugees.

From the ferry you can see the two smallest, uninhabited, islands, known in Greek and Turkish as the "pointy" Oxya/Sivri and the "flat" Plate/Yassi. Sivri's main claim to fame was that in the 19th and early 20th centuries Istanbul's stray dogs would be occasionally rounded up and dumped there, while Yassi was the site of the trial and execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes after the 1960 military coup. Two of the other inhabited islands are Kinaliada, popular with the city's Armenians, and Burgaz Ada, know to be more Greek, though neither have any significant sights.