Soğuk Çeşme Sokak

This guide to Sogukcesme Sokak in Istanbul traces the narrow lane wedged between Topkapi Palace's outer wall and a row of Ottoman wooden houses that the city planned to clear in the 1970s. You'll hear how Celik Gulersoy, chairman of the Turkish Touring and Automobile Club, argued the houses belonged beside the sultan's palace rather than under it, and how his team rebuilt them from 1985 in concrete veneered with wood, furnished to look nineteenth century. Find the small fountain at the far end, near Gulhane Park, that gave the cold-water street its name.