Arasta Çarşısı
Ottoman-era market street built to fund an adjacent imperial mosque, with Byzantine mosaics beneath.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Arasta Çarşısı in Istanbul traces the market street built behind the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in 1609 to fund its daily upkeep — candlelighters, cooks, scholars — through shop rents paid by Ottoman cavalrymen buying saddles and tack. It follows the street through a 1912 fire that left it in ruins for decades, and to the British archaeologists who arrived in the 1930s to excavate the site. Look down as you browse the carpet and ceramic stalls — the ground beneath them has more to it than cobblestones.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Egyptian Bazaar
Covered Ottoman bazaar of spice, sweet, and herb stalls built to fund an imperial mosque complex.
Grand Bazaar
Sprawling covered Ottoman market with over four thousand shops across sixty-one vaulted streets.
Great Palace Mosaics Museum
Byzantine floor mosaics in situ, once the courtyard floor of Constantinople's imperial palace.
Büyük Valide Han
Ottoman caravanserai with three vast courtyards, once a hub for Persian silk and carpet merchants.
The Blue Mosque
Ottoman imperial mosque with six minarets and twenty-one thousand blue Iznik tiles inside.
Cagaloglu Hamami
Baroque Ottoman hammam with domed chambers and carved marble, operating since seventeen forty-one.