Echobul

What it does

• 17 walks across Istanbul, from Sultanahmet, Topkapı Palace and the Grand Bazaar to Balat, Kadıköy, the Bosphorus shore, Büyükada and the land walls, with 134 stops with stories and 13 optional food stops.
• The app follows your location, vibrates as you get close and plays the story when you reach the stop; you can pause, go back or skip from the lock screen or your headphones, and the map shows the way to the next stop.
• Every story is recorded in English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Korean, and the app itself is in the same ten languages.
• A walk can be downloaded before you go, so its stories, photos and route work without mobile data; each walk shows its length, walking time and whether the streets are flat or hilly.

How it works

• The Sultanahmet walk is free and needs no account. An Echo Pass opens every walk for the number of days you choose, from 1 to 60; it is a single Google Play payment and nothing renews.
• The stories are read by an AI voice from texts written and checked against sources. There are no ads and no third-party trackers; signing in with Google is optional, for keeping your pass and progress on another phone.

Who it is for

Visitors who want to walk Istanbul at their own pace with the story of each place in their own language, without joining a group or staring at a screen.

Limits

• Android only.
• The street map only shows areas already opened while online, so look over a walk once while online before you go.

Built with

• Flutter
• Laravel
• MapLibre