For a hundred years this stretch of the Bosphorus shore belonged to the port and nobody else could walk on it. Galataport opened it up: the cruise terminal was buried underground and the surface became a promenade a kilometre and a half long. There are shops and restaurants along it, and Istanbul Modern sits at […]

Karakoy is where Istanbul’s independent makers ended up. The streets behind the ferry terminal hold ceramic studios, jewellery workshops, concept stores and paper shops, most of them small and most run by the people who make what they sell. It is a different kind of shopping from the old city: nothing is haggled, nothing is […]

Sahaflar Carsisi is a courtyard of booksellers wedged between the Grand Bazaar and Beyazit Square. It is small — a dozen stalls around a shaded square — and it is one of the oldest continuously trading spots in the city. What people take home from here tends to be paper rather than souvenirs: reproductions of […]

Behind the Spice Bazaar the tourist city stops abruptly and Tahtakale begins. This is the wholesale district: narrow streets, handcarts, and shops that sell in quantities most visitors have no use for. Go anyway. It is the most alive part of the old city, and small purchases are perfectly welcome — a bag of Turkish […]

If the Grand Bazaar feels like too much, Nuruosmaniye Street is the answer. It runs along the bazaar’s eastern edge, lined with jewellers, carpet dealers and antique shops that have been in the same families for decades. Shopping here is quieter work. The shops are proper storefronts with windows, prices are more often fixed than […]

Cevahir was once the biggest mall in Europe and still feels it: six levels, three hundred and forty shops, and a glass roof with an enormous clock face set into it. It opened in Sisli in 2005. This is everyday shopping rather than luxury — familiar high-street labels, electronics, a cinema and one of the […]

Four thousand shops, sixty-one covered streets, and a floor plan that defeats almost everyone on a first visit. The Grand Bazaar has been trading since 1461 and remains a working market rather than an exhibit, which is why it can be exhausting and why it is worth the effort. Look for the Ic Bedesten at […]

You smell the Spice Bazaar before you reach it. Built in 1664 to fund the New Mosque next door, it remains the place Istanbul buys saffron, sumac, dried fruit and tea, and the concentration of it in one vaulted hall is the whole experience. Around eighty shops trade under the roof. Turkish delight comes in […]

Arasta is the bazaar for people who found the Grand Bazaar too much. One straight street of about seventy shops, tucked behind the Blue Mosque, selling largely the same goods with none of the pressure. Carpets and kilims dominate, alongside ceramics, textiles and silver. Dealers here expect browsers and will unroll pieces without expecting a […]

If the bazaars are not what you came for, Istinye Park is the opposite end of Istanbul shopping: three hundred shops, fixed prices, air conditioning, and a luxury wing with the names you would find in Milan or Paris. It opened in 2007 in Sariyer and was designed with a retractable roof over the central […]

Forum Istanbul is less a mall than a complex: two hundred and fifty shops, plus an aquarium, a Madame Tussauds, a snow park and a cinema, all under one roof in Bayrampasa. Turkuazoo is the reason most visitors make the trip. It was Turkey’s first public aquarium and its main tunnel runs through a tank […]