Cicek Pasaji (Flower Passage)

A covered arcade on Istiklal Avenue, built in 1876 to a design by Cleanthy Zanno on the site of a theatre that had burned down. It was originally called the Cite de Pera and was an apartment building with shops below and flats above - an exemplary building of European Istanbul, with mirrors, stucco and a glass roof on cast-iron trusses. It became the Flower Passage in the 1920s: after the revolution in Russia, emigre women who traded in flowers gathered here, and the name stuck. Later the flower sellers were pushed out by beer halls - meyhanes - and now tables stand under the glass roof, where people eat meze and drink raki to live music. The building was nearly lost: in 1978 part of the gallery collapsed, the passage was closed and it took ten years to restore. It is touristy in the extreme now and prices are higher than round about, but the interior with its tiers of balconies and its lighting is worth stepping in for, if only to look.

On the map