From the bazaars to Galata

Start on the tram line at Çemberlitaş, on Divanyolu Caddesi, the spine of the old city. Under the asphalt runs the Mese, Constantinople's ceremonial avenue, once lined with colonnaded porticoes full of shops; the Ottomans renamed it Divanyolu, the way to the Divan, because dignitaries processed along it to council meetings at Topkapı. Where you stand was a circular forum with two monumental gates and the city's first Senate House. What survives is a small paved square between tram tracks and shopfronts, and the walk goes from here through the bazaars to the water. You cannot mistake the stop: a tall shaft of dark purple stone, bound with iron hoops, rises beside the tram platform.

Cross the little square; the bathhouse shares it with the column. Trams slide past the platform every few minutes, and the iron hoops on the stone above you gave the quarter its name: Çemberlitaş, the hooped stone. This corner of Divanyolu belonged to one family. The Köprülü complex beside you, a medrese and a tomb, was founded in the early 1660s for the Grand Vizier Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who died in 1661 and lies in the tomb; his son Fâzıl Ahmed, grand vizier after him, added the library beside it, the first free-standing library building in Istanbul, and was buried beside his father. The hammam is the low stone building of shallow domes beside the column, its name written over the door.

Vezirhanı Caddesi drops from the tram street toward the bazaar, a few minutes of shoe shops and goldsmiths. It is named for the Vezir Han along it, the caravanserai the Köprülü family added to their complex under Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha: a courtyard inn where merchants slept above their stock, still let out as workshops today. This slope has been the trading edge of the city since the forum stood behind you. It ends at a walled courtyard; above it a single wide dome and two slender minarets, and just beyond the mosque, an ornate stone gate, the way into the Grand Bazaar.

Through the gate, and the sky is replaced by painted vaults. The light turns warm and lamp-lit, the air smells of leather and brass polish, and the noise of the city drops to the murmur of bargaining. Kalpakçılarbaşı Caddesi is the jewellers' road, the bazaar's main artery, window after window of gold chains under bright bulbs; its name recalls the makers of the kalpak, the fur cap, who once worked along it. Each passage here takes its name from a trade, and Takkeciler Sokağı, where you stop, belonged to the skullcap-sellers. You have arrived when the lane runs alongside a blank stone wall pierced by an arched gate.

Out along Yağlıkçılar Sokağı, then into Mercan Caddesi, five minutes. The covered streets give way to open ones, and the slope of Mercan is where the bazaar spills into the city: a district of hans, the stone warehouse-inns where goods were stored and traders lodged. An 1890 survey counted twenty-four hans in the bazaar; after the 1894 earthquake the rebuilt perimeter enclosed only nine, leaving the rest outside its walls. The lanes here are wholesale, porters with hand-carts, bolts of cloth, boxes stacked on the pavement. The han you are heading for is the biggest of them all, a whole block of plain stone wall. Look for its arched gateway, modest for a building this size; the passage behind it opens into courtyards ringed by two storeys of vaulted arcades.

Ten minutes, and the first real climb, up the third hill. Uzunçarşı Caddesi, the Long Market, follows the Byzantine Makros Embolos, the long colonnaded market street that ran down to the Golden Horn harbours, and it still sells: turned wood, kitchenware, backgammon sets, new and used clothes. İsmetiye Caddesi leaves the market behind, and the noise fades with every step as the lanes narrow toward the mosque quarter named for the building you are heading to. Four minarets and one great dome fill the end of the walkway; the terrace beyond the mosque opens onto the whole Golden Horn.

Downhill now, by Uzunçarşı Caddesi again and into Tahtakale, the wholesale quarter wedged between the hills and the water. It has traded since Byzantine times and still does, in bulk: textiles, glassware, stationery, spices, all moving on hand-carts through lanes barely wide enough for them. The chronicler Peçevi records that the city's first coffeehouses opened here in Tahtakale around 1555, kept by two merchants, one from Aleppo and one from Damascus. Hasırcılar Caddesi, where the stop is, is the Straw-weavers' Market, named for the mat-makers who worked it. The mosque is invisible from the lane: look for a narrow staircase rising between shops. It climbs to a raised courtyard, the mosque built on a terrace above the market.

Follow Hasırcılar Caddesi a few minutes to its end. At the corner of Tahmis Sokağı there is a queue, and the reason for it: since 1871, when Mehmet Efendi took over his father's herb-and-spice shop and began roasting coffee, this corner has smelt of it, and the shop still sells from the same spot. Sacks and crates line the kerb, and the hand-carts of Tahtakale give way to tourists with cameras. The Egyptian Bazaar is the long stone flank ahead, a row of domes along its roof, and the high arched gateway in it is your entrance.

Round the corner of the market, two minutes, and the city opens. Eminönü takes its name from the emin, the Ottoman customs official; the name most likely comes from the customs houses that stood on the docks here, the trading front of a port as old as the city. The square itself is young: it was made in the early years of the Republic when the tollbooths at the end of the Galata Bridge were cleared away. Now it is pigeons, seed-sellers, ferry horns and the roar of traffic along the shore. A cascade of domes and two minarets rise over the square, with a broad staircase climbing to the mosque's courtyard gate.

Cross the coast road to the water, then onto Galata Köprüsü itself, ten minutes. Eminönü is one of the city's great ferry hubs, and the piers hum: boats to Üsküdar, to Kadıköy, up the Bosphorus; fish-sandwich boats rock beside them. The water is the Haliç, estuary, from the Arabic khaleej; the Greeks called it the Golden Horn, perhaps for the riches that came through this harbour. The far shore is Karaköy, a port since Byzantine times when it was a separate town. You know you are on the bridge when rods line the rail and restaurants open below your feet, and the Galata Tower rises over the far bank.

Off the bridge into Karaköy, and a steep quarter-hour climb. Bankalar Caddesi was the financial centre of the late Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman Bank's 1892 headquarters now holds SALT Galata, and the avenue stayed Istanbul's banking street until the 1990s, when the banks moved to Levent and Maslak. Its Camondo Stairs, a curving double staircase between Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau, were built around 1870 by the banker Abraham Salomon Camondo. Above, the climb runs through what was the Genoese colony, walled and moated until the 1860s; Büyük Hendek Caddesi means great moat. At the top a small square opens, and the round stone tower with its conical cap fills it. You have ended among cafés, close to Tünel and Karaköy.