Instant Cities: Istanbul

Istanbul › Places and landmarks

Grand Bazaar

Kapalıçarşı

One of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world, some sixty streets and four thousand shops under one roof.

See it in 3D Watch the tour

Photo: Jorge Franganillo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Grand Bazaar grew round two domed halls that Mehmed II had built in the 1450s and 1460s for the trade in cloth and jewels. Over the centuries the streets between them were roofed over, until it became a town of its own, with mosques, fountains, cafés and its own gates.

Today some four thousand shops sell gold, carpets, lamps, leather and copper along about sixty covered streets. Its gates close in the evening and on Sundays. The Nuruosmaniye Mosque stands at its eastern gate, and the Divan Yolu runs past it to the south. Visit it in 3D ›

More in Istanbul

Hagia SophiaJustinian’s great church of 537, with its dome 55 metres high: a church, then a mosque, a museum and a mosque again. Blue MosqueThe mosque of Sultan Ahmed I, with six minarets and some twenty thousand blue tiles from İznik inside. HippodromeThe long square where Byzantium held its chariot races, with an Egyptian obelisk and a bronze serpent column still on it. Basilica CisternThe underground water store of Justinian, a forest of 336 columns standing in the water. Topkapı PalaceThe palace of the Ottoman sultans for almost four hundred years, on the tip of the peninsula above the Bosphorus. Spice BazaarThe L-shaped covered market by the New Mosque, full of spices, dried fruit, tea and Turkish delight. New MosqueThe great mosque on the water at Eminönü, begun in 1597 and finished 68 years later. Galata BridgeThe bridge over the Golden Horn from Eminönü to Karaköy, lined with anglers on top and fish restaurants below. Sirkeci StationThe end of the line for the Orient Express from Paris, a station of 1890 by the sea. Column of ConstantineThe column Constantine the Great set up in 330 for the founding of his new capital, held together by iron hoops. SimitThe sesame bread ring sold from red carts on every corner, eaten for breakfast with a glass of tea. FerriesThe white ferries that carry Istanbul across the Bosphorus between Europe and Asia, from the quays of Eminönü.