Hello, I’m Serhat Engul, a professional tour guide in Istanbul for nearly two decades, sharing my knowledge and experience of the city with travelers through blogs like Istanbul Clues.
Istanbul Stories is a fictional world I designed to break the encyclopedic narrative style I’ve been confined to for so many years.
Here, we speak to you from a fabled universe, alongside Alek, a seagull, Misi, a cat, and Rubi, a mouse. Because these fairytale characters are unbound by time and space, they bring different periods of Istanbul’s 2,700-year history to life.

A Journey through Time, Told by Wing, Whisker, and Whisper

As a local tour guide with years of experience exploring the city’s iconic sites — Hagia Sophia, the Hippodrome, Topkapi Palace — I realized something was missing from the way we tell Istanbul’s story.

Most visitors capture the surface — a photo, a date, a monument. But what about the soul of the city? What about the stories that echo behind stone walls or drift across the Bosphorus on the wings of seabirds?

This is where Istanbul Stories begins — with a question:
What if animals could speak of the things we can no longer see?

Meet Alek, Misi, and Rubi

Our stories are told not by historians, but by Istanbul’s silent companions:

• Alek, the sharp-eyed seagull, circles the sky with a timeless gaze. From above, he witnesses emperors rise and fall, fires rage, domes rise like prayers.
• Misi, the melancholic cat, curls beneath fountains and along rooftops, sensing the city’s emotional memory — its loneliness, longing, and change.
• Rubi, the observant mouse, scurries through the cracks in palaces and cisterns, gathering forgotten whispers and hidden truths.

Together, they narrate an alternative history of Constantinople and Istanbul — one shaped not only by emperors and wars, but by shadows, scents, silences, and secrets.

A Fable for the Modern Traveler

Here, history is not taught. It is felt.
Each story is a fable — poetic, timeless, and alive with metaphor. Inspired by the traditions of Calvino, La Fontaine, and Neil Gaiman, Istanbul Stories invites you to rediscover the city through the lens of imagination.

These are not fairy tales.
They are memories dressed in feathers, fur, and whiskers.
They are the city’s dreams, waiting for someone to listen.

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Follow Alek, Misi, and Rubi.
And let Istanbul tell you its secrets — one story at a time.

The Completing Piece of the Trilogy

Even after reimagining places like the Hippodrome of Constantinople through fables and stories such as Three Witnesses of a Stone: The Obelisk of Theodosius, I still felt something was missing.

I wanted to tell the story of Constantinople between 330 and 1453 — the era I’ve studied for years — not just through myth, but through human experience. Inspired by authors like Dean Koontz and Paulo Coelho, I dreamed of bridging the poetic and the real, the timeless and the personal.

Thanks to modern AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, that dream took shape. Together, we created Byzantine Stories and brought Stavros to life — a character who walks between past and present, between dreams and history.

Now, my storytelling has no limits: from the skies with Alek, the streets with Misi, and the walls with Rubi — to the heart of Byzantium with Stavros.

Three Worlds, One City: A Storytelling Universe

Istanbul Stories is part of a storytelling trilogy that explores Istanbul through knowledge, imagination, and human emotion.
Each project offers a unique way of seeing the same city — from facts to fables, and from dreams to reality.

• The Guide’s Voice – IstanbulClues.com
  Where you’ll find detailed historical guides, cultural insights, and the living pulse of Istanbul through the eyes of a professional tour guide.
• The Fable’s Magic – IstanbulStories.com
  You are here — in the poetic realm where Alek the seagull, Misi the cat, and Rubi the mouse tell the city’s dreams through timeless fables.
• The Human Echo – ByzantineStories.com
  Step into the world of Stavros, a modern man who time-travels through dreams to ancient Constantinople — where history and fiction meet in a tapestry of memory and emotion.

Who Am I?

My name is Serhat Engul. I’ve been working as a licensed tour guide in Istanbul for nearly 20 years. Over the years, I’ve walked through every corner of this city, telling its stories to travelers from around the world.

Eventually, I realized that Istanbul leaves a deeper mark not just through facts, but through storytelling. That’s how Alek, Misi, and Rubi were born.

Through these symbolic characters, I aim to reflect both the spirit of today and the memory of the past in a more poetic and whimsical way. IstanbulStories.com brings together the insights of a guide and the imagination of a storyteller.

If you would like to read my previous travel articles about Istanbul from the perspective of a tourist guide, you can find a very extensive archive on IstanbulClues.com.

If you would like to witness Stavros, the final piece of this creative universe, wandering the streets of Constantinople through his dreams, you can also visit ByzantineStories.com.

Hoping our paths cross in Istanbul one day,
Serhat Engul