Istiklal Avenue

A pedestrian street about a kilometre and a half long, running from Taksim Square to the Tunel in the Beyoglu district. In Ottoman times this was the Grande Rue de Pera, the main street of European Istanbul: embassies, banks, bookshops and the city's first department stores stood here, and the public was predominantly Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Levantine. Hence the architecture - neoclassicism, art nouveau and late-nineteenth-century eclecticism, with arcades running back into the blocks. A nostalgic tram runs down the middle of the street: a single red carriage on a restored route of 1914, which moves in the general pedestrian flow and rings its bell to clear a way. The avenue remains the busiest street in the city, with hundreds of thousands of people a day, and at weekends it is almost impossible to walk in a straight line. Closer to the Tunel the crowd thins out and shops selling old records and musical instruments begin.

On the map