Beyoglu
Starting our Beyoğlu tour from Taksim and its surroundings and looking at the side streets parallel to Istiklal Avenue and opening to it, we will take a comprehensive tour first to Taksim-Galatasaray, Balık Pazarı, Çiçek Pasaj and then to Galatasaray-Tunnel stage.Throughout this tour, we will look at shopping centers, places where we can eat, where we can spend time, especially where in the passages, what is sold, where there is fun. The area around Taksim Atatürk Monument was rearranged for the Taksim Square pedestrianization project and a flat stone floor was created. A new view was created with the wide area water sprinkler pools lighting units extending towards the Divan Junction.The outer diameter of Atatürk Taksim Monument is surrounded by walking platform, tram rails touring the monument, flower sellers and pigeons.
If we expand the diameter further, there are bus stops, PTT branch, hamburgers selling fast food, pizza-like shops, restaurants on one side, and the section where florists are clustered and arranged as a walk and grass area during the Taksim Trip. Talimhane streets, newly built hotels are looking at Taksim.At the far point of the square, we take the section surrounded by the parcel of Atatürk Cultural Center, The Marmara Hotel behind us, and turn our face to İstiklal Street in front of the Taksim tram stop. In this section, when the traffic is closed and the stops are taken underground, passengers from the metro and the Kabataş Taksim fenucular system come to the earth at this point in the city center of Taksim. They are the most active point of the city. Taksim, tram stop, is colored with the stalls of flower sellers lined up along Taksim Maksemi.
Gezi Patisserie overlooking Taksim Square and next to AKM, the café under The Marmara Hotel, turns left with cafes located at the beginning of Kazancı slope, continues on the left arm where there is a dessert shop, restaurant, and various cafes and the Büyük Maksim Gazinos and stretches to Sıraselviler Street. There is the opportunity to sit at the street tables set up on the halls of the break places and the walking platform in front of them, as you sip your coffee or enjoy the dessert while watching the whole square. Another stopover place is at the 24-hour queue service and fast food and similar kiosks, restaurants, doner kebabs, wet hamburgers around the island that separates Istiklal Street.
Let me mention briefly for those who are curious about the wet hamburger. Hamburger patties are cooked flat in a toaster, placed in a round hamburger bread, poured with a special sauce prepared with a mixture of hot pepper, tomato sauce, possibly sugar and some spices, it is offered for sale in a glass in hot form, kept in steam.Wet hamburgers are among the absolute frequent destinations of young people going to Beyoğlu trip, bar, cinema and concert exits.It is even so popular that they come to Taksim to eat wet burgers from various parts of the city.In the past years, there was a Crystal Hamburger on the Taksim Trip side and was considered one of the first stopovers at any time of the day.
Before the concert, cinema, bar, disco outlet or before, a few of them were eaten on the floor before they cooled down or the burgers were wrapped and going home.Fast food buffets, Ayvalık Tostcusu, observer, meatball, Butcher’s Doner, and tantunicisi are becoming more and more concentrated.You can encounter all kinds of activities, including those who drink soft drinks, eat ice cream, corn, chestnuts along the street, and keep an eye on their mobile phone while walking in Beyoğlu.
Istiklal Street, Beyoğlu always has the feature of a street toured by a crowded crowd day and night, and on the sidewalk platform it stretches straight to the end of the tunnel, without any urban furniture.The tram passes this crowd with its slow cruising speed, the crowd fills the road again soon, there is no place to step on the weekend.You can come across all kinds of motor vehicles, wheeled electric vehicles on the traffic-free road!On our right, Taksim Maskem and the two bird palaces on its front and the beginning of the famous street, like a touchstone, are counted. Adjacent to the French Cultural Center, it stretches across, and a cafe welcomes customers in the blind spot where it ends.
The opposite side of the consulate witnesses a more colorful and lively life like the good news that you are in the fashion center of Istanbul.Appointments and waiting, showcases decorated with appetizing sandwiches, adjacent coffee halls, Espresso Cappuccino, Instant coffee, break places with filter and flavored coffee. Although those who sit close to the edge of the glass, like the fish in the aquarium come and go, you are sipping your coffee by looking at the tram once in a while.It continues with shops and stores, boutiques, pharmacy, foreign exchange buffet, bookstore and bank branch in the same branch.
On the corner of Meşelik Sokak, after İşbank, Emgen Han and Mim Han, we come to one of the enjoyable stops. This is a deep, two-storey gallery named “Megavizyon”. We exit from the wide entrance with a few steps, passing through the magazines with right and left, we can walk through the CDs, newly released books, DVDs, domestic and foreign tapes, movies, stands, discount CD pools and go to the upper floor of the gallery’s book section. If we want to look at souvenirs sold alongside books, magazines, CDs, DVDs and safes, we need to spend a lot of time on Megavizyon. (Unfortunately, these lines have been in the past as of October 2008.
Megavizyon has shrunk like other Beyoğlu bookstores due to the economic crisis)!On the opposite side of the road is the Aksanat Building, next to the renowned cinema of the time, Fitaş World cinemas, with an entranced escalator entrance.We come to the 1597 Ağa Mosque, which is the only mosque in Beyoğlu, with Vakıf Han, Zanni Apartments, Ragıppaşa Rumeli Passage, “Rebul Pharmacy” famous for its “Rebul Pharmacy” and Beyoğlu’s only mosque.The Historical Mosque contains many objects worth seeing with its fountain, garden, door and sconces. Many buildings around the mosque, which was repaired in 2014, are either demolished and rebuilt or undergoing restoration. Therefore, those who do not go to Beyoğlu for a short period of time are surprised by the rapid change they see in their next exit. They cannot see many stops, either because they are surrounded by wooden curtains, or because they are destroyed in a hurry.
Demirören Shopping Mall
The building where the Palace Cinema and Palace Muhallebicisi once was in Beyoğlu was demolished, rebuilt and completed in the spring of 2011 and Demirören Shopping Mall was opened as a shopping center. While the basement floors of the five-storey shopping mall, which covers a total area of 25 thousand square meters over nine thousand square meters, serve as a techno-market, top floors are white goods, kitchen tools and equipment, fashion brand boutiques, shoemakers, cosmetics, books, CDs. vendors, fast food halls, cinema.
The floors of the giant building, which looks like another Beyoğlu in Beyoğlu, are invisible, and are colored with young people traveling by cafes and escalators.It serves as a kind of shelter in cold and rainy weather as in other passages. Famous brands include Sephora, By Saatci, Brandroom, Guess, Atasagun, GNC Live Well, Mothercare, Vakko, Tabacco, Gap, Flormar, Katon, Divarese, Nosta, Gap, Hummel, Twist, Soft One, Tchibo, Virgin, 4G, İnci Includes Deichmann, Cinemation, Denizbank, Laura Baresse Lingeria.On Demirören AVM side street, briefly next to Ağa Mosque, its historyHaci Abdullah restaurant is located.Since 1888, he moved to Karaköy, after 1915, to Beyoğlu Rumelihan, from there to Sadri Alışık street, and finally to 1958, Sakızağacı Street. The famous restaurant, where 150 dishes are made every day, the seasonal vegetables, pickles, compote jars, the kebab with its favorite dishes, the skillet of lamb, eggplant, pottery kebab, lamb, chicken oven, cauliflower, olive oil artichoke, ashura. one of the absolute haunt points.We continue again on the main street and pass to the opposite side, that is, Küçük Küçükkapı, Büyük İncekapı.
Mephısto, which is the frequent destination of book lovers, CD collectors and DVD seekers, offers attractive objects from each other. You find so much to buy that you forget the time among those on display, you even get lost.Local and foreign CDs are lined up at the entrance of the gallery, Turkish Pop, foreign rock, jazz, and metal alphabetical order. In addition to the stationery types, the newest ones to the market in the middle section draw attention.The books on the mezzanine, which stands out from the front of the case with a few steps, extend deep into the gallery, while the lower floor contains DVDs, movies and long plays. As soon as you tell the staff what you are looking for, you can look at the computer and respond to your request in a short time or even if it is not, it is brought in a short time.
Denizbank, Ankara Han, Ali Muhittin Hacı Bekir, Karakedi Plaque, we are in the arm where the closing Vakko is D&R. Among them is the Palace Muhallebicisi, which was moved from the other sidewalk. On the one hand, while the kebab, winner, pudding, and chicken breast are eaten, on the other hand, the pudding cooked on a rotating pie mixes with the smell of meat, which can be considered as an arabesque application.However, in Beyoğlu pudding, pudding, restaurants and buffets, pilaf and similar things were eaten. In other words, the custard turns, the doner does not sell the custard! I will not be surprised if they soon start selling kokorec, tantuni, kebabs, and I would even expect this from the Saray Muhallebic!The Sıraselviler connection from Istiklal Street is full of underground streets, underground breweries, rock bars, and breakfast buffets.
Those who have a cheap tea and spend time in the seats that overflow to the streets prefer coffee places in the winter and the break places on the journalist Erol Dernek street in good weather. Later in the day, when the night turns dark enough, the innocent, calm atmosphere of the streets is moving with the advent of rock youth. Places such as “Hayal Kahvesi” and “Mojo”, which are one of the rock bars with live music, are among the first choices of the youth. There are plenty of people with steam, the notes that keep flying in the air, some on the road, some underground rock bars are working without interruption to change the air of the aspirator sounds that continue until the morning.You surely encounter an exciting youth with bands that listen to or play the live rock songs like DJ to be wild, Smoke on the water, Whole lotta somewhere.
Either they hang out at the bar counter, or go to the tables, listen to the DJ’s choices in the company of beers, and then when the group starts playing music, the young people who are overwhelming with the group, to some extent relieve the stress created by the school, the games and the business life.Usually the regulars of the bars, even the places they sit, are the same, and there are not people who walk around the bar. We are walking on the main street next to Garanti Bank. We are coming in. We are in Ayhan Işık Street. A pilaf who has been serving around the corner for two years increases his reputation day by day.
Karadeniz Kalkanoğlu Pilav Pilaf, which is known in Trabzon and continues its profession from generation to generation, is highly appreciated for its plain broth with delicious pilaf from dry rice, dry beans and roasted pilaf options.It is appreciated by the new and indispensable flavors of Beyoğlu with brown rice.The service, which starts at noon, closes at 20.00 when the second rice pan is exhausted.We leave the new Melek show center, side street cafes behind us and come to the Atlas Passage, which was once famous for Atlas Cinema.Atlas PassageWe are entering the building with the number 207 dated 1870. The first cinema posters are viewed, the ticket booth still stands, but Kulis Bar, which is a famous place even though it does not attract much attention with its curtain screen, is no longer there.
Since the 2000s, another sector on watch, jewelry has been serving at Kulis Bar. In the 80s, the regulars of Kulis Bar were certain people, artists. All of them have known each other for years as if they were at work, others were wondering if one was a little late, their love friendship was this degree.I have a little memory here I can’t pass without telling. We had an interview with journalist Necmi Onur with theater actor Erol Günaydın.The place of appointment is Kulis Bar. 11:00 in the morning. A few middle-aged retired or dismissed businesspeople have made it a business to have a conversation after breakfast, two of them have come, they are talking from the water. One tells the other, my saint says Bilgiç Bilgiç, “I pour homemade cherry jam on white cheese, it is very nice”. The other one is being thrown, “Mirim, I did what you did with peach jam, it was not good”. “No, master, listen to me, do it with cherry jam like me,” he says.With these conversations, the first drinks are started to be drunk.
The waiters already know who is drinking and how much he can drink. The order is addressed to the name, “Make one from mine”. We leave the memories behind and leave the imaginary Kulis Bar.We are at the entrance of the passage again, there is the “Sefahathane” right across the street, a famous bar that is clearly visible, food, drink, music and also a favorite of young people.We enter the passage with a few steps, the passage created by the trip corridors on the right and left, the double-fronted shops that look at these trip corridors in the middle, is dominated by more than 50 shops that usually contain boutiques, accessories for creating style. Souvenirs, incense, second-hand CDs, plaques, posters, ornaments, jewelry, rental costumes, in short, whatever you are looking for.For example, you can find a turtle Voswos or VW minibus trinket, a stylish lighter, watch, lampshade, a silver pocket cognac container from the gallery that sells trinkets, models, decorative objects at the entrance.Let me get a T-shirt a little ahead so that if you want my picture soul to reflect me, it is there.
That is why young people who want to create their own lines in fashion cheaply meet their jeans, belts, shoes, accessories and clothing needs from here. In the lines above, I told the dear readers of sihirlitur.com that there is no Vakko closing in Beyoğlu anymore. Well, what do you say? We are approaching Galatasaray Square by passing by shops like İGS, Kip, Kığılı, Mavicin, Hatemoğlu, Halil, İKM, Lacoste, Oxxo, Mink Kürk, Benetton, Polo, FBI, Nike, Adidas and bank branches.Of course, “İnci Patisserie”, owned by Luka Zgoridis, another point of call, is again sought with a profiterole with chocolate sauce.Since Emek Cinema was destroyed, İnci had to leave his old place and host his guests in his new place. İnci Patisserie is moved to the shop no. 18 / A on Mis Sokak, 200 meters behind from its old place to Taksim, and serves at its new location.
There is also the possibility of sitting outside in front of İnci Patisserie.The hall extends inward, although everything is as before, the tables and chairs are the only thing left from the past, except for the cash register from the old shop, the scales meet the customers on the counter.The taste of our mouth has changed or I do not know the quality, but most of those who eat profitrol say that the chocolate sauce used to be more intense and sweet. Nevertheless, new İnci regulars are in demand as a place to meet, chat, and remember old tastes.Beyoğlu is a place where you can walk with a snack. Some take the ice cream in summer and walk, some in winter, Beyoğlu chocolate with nuts, chestnut kebab, bagel, sandwich!
There are three or four buffets that sell Beyoğlu Chocolate, all of them have been silent and they have been selling Beyoğlu Chocolate with no name, and they have been selling this chocolate for years. Elit Beyoğlu chocolate, which is a nostalgic taste, has been in existence for 90 years. Nuts, damask, almonds, milk, dark chocolate, some gilded and some open-toe chocolate meet you with your curiosity. You can often see those who continue their Beyoğlu trip by buying a small package and eating it.We dive into the side street that runs parallel to the Galatasaray Square Fish Market, where there is also a famous fabric shop Iliya, which has been a history.
Iliya, which is one of the oldest fabric stores of Beyoglu, is one of the places frequented by tailor made suits, trousers, jackets, coats and topcoats.Iliya, which imports all the best quality and hardest-looking fabrics, closely informs the fashion, informs even the most demanding ones about fabric selection and model type with the skills of master and private tailors.We leave behind the “Aleppo Passage” dating back to 1885 and the Tokatlıyan dated 1897, where the sellers of CDs, silversmiths, books, scarves, posters, t-shirts, jewelry, souvenirs, shawls, scarves and posters are located at the entrance. .
Galatasaray Square
This is actually a small square, not one that many people say. However, the trams departing from both Taksim and Tunnel stops come in one way, where the rails are mating at the tram stop, they change the scissors by waiting for a short time and overtake each other, like a spectacle show, this shear change is one of the places where photographs are taken and taken.On the right, there is the Flower Passage, the Fish Market entrance, the British Consulate road separation, the left side of the Galatasaray High School’s monumental gate and the school where the school is located, and the building where the exhibition hall is located, on the left side, the Yapı Kredi Bank, ATM booths, cultural publications.Yapi Kredi Publishing House offers new books on its windows facing two fronts, but you find more than the books you are looking for on the shelves inside.(Continues at its new location in the Bookstore building as of 2019)The front of the book house is always crowded, constantly moving because Galatasaray Square is the starting place for all shows, walks, press announcements and events. When this is the case, civilian and official police are often deployed at this center in Tomas.
Galatasaray Club Museum
Galatasaray Square, opposite the Galatasaray High School, has the Galatasaray Club Museum, where the old Galatasaray Post Office is located, on three floors of the building decorated with ornate ceilings.The statues of the legendary football player Metin Oktay and Ali Sami Yen, the trophies won by Galatasaray club, the half-trophy cut and shared with Fenerbahçe, the signed jersey of Drogba and team players, the football boots of Mario Jardel, the balls of the match, the tables , photos, antique pieces, gifts given to the club can be seen.
The European Passage is here, at the same time, Ayvalık Tostcusu around the corner and the Hard Rock Cafe, which is one of the new ones opened at the beginning of 2014, quietly. You can both sit and eat, drink beer, and buy samples from the fashion of the day.As such, these are generally varied from sportswear appealing to youth, with illustrated tee-sorts, shirts, and pants of famous groups. On the other hand, at the beginning of the road that goes down to Tophane district between GS high school and Yapı Kredi Cultural Center, the road goes uphill with “Ara Kafe”, “Galatasaray Post Office”, “Can Kitapevi” and others.Here too, bars and places frequented by young people continue at the beginning of the step.
Street musicians often sit on the sidewalks and make music from the GS square.Especially on weekends, there are guitar sounds from one place, violin tunes, law sounds, accordion songs from another place.If you are a stranger to the street, you say that Beyoğlu is such a place, you are watching, listening, and continuing on your way by giving a small tip.As the road turns left, the “French Pass” begins on the right.You are faced with a lot of options where you can remain undecided about where to sit and where to spend time.If you want, there are terrace bars, or maybe even large and small halls inside the garden, front doors, stair landings, side streets are everywhere, everywhere has become a place, the places in the passage have no view but have a warm friendly atmosphere.Even those who do not sit through this street to breathe the air of this narrow and colorful passage and take some pictures.Another reason for the transition is that the French Pass provides shortcuts to the Çukurcuma district, where antiques are abundant.