Photos from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar

Curious Expeditions has posted a gallery of photos taken at Istanbul's Kapalıçarşı, or Grand Bazaar. It has been in existence since the 1400s.

Swinging platters holding steaming cups of tea zoom past us. Mustachioed men give us their best sales pitch, trying at least seven different languages; “Hallo! Guten tag? Bonjour? Buenos Dias? Konichiwa?” We wander past the slipper-merchants, mirror-merchants, leather-merchants, past the carpet-merchants, pipe-merchants, lamp-merchants, fur-merchants, gold-merchants, and then we find it. The store we didn’t know was there, but once we saw it, knew we had been looking for.

The Grand Bazaar, or Covered Bazaar (Kapaliçarsi) in Istanbul is a magical city within a city. With over 60 streets and more then 4400 shops, the world’s first mall is a buzzing hive of activity, catering to the shopping whims of the some 400,000 people who might visit it on a given day. It also must meet the needs of the 25,000 shopkeepers who attend to them, and a couple of small mosques can be found tucked in between the many shops.

Link

[#1 posted by travelina , February 13, 2008 10:17 AM]

The link appears to be broken, Mark. So while you're fixing the visual images, here are some sounds of the Grand Bazaar, from the poem "I Am Listening to Istanbul" by Orhan Veli, via Metroblogging Istanbul:
http://istanbul.metblogs.com/archives/2007/09/istanbul_in_fam.phtml

[#2 posted by Alper Çugun , February 13, 2008 11:14 AM]

The souk of Aleppo is worth at least as much a visit as the Kapalıçarşı (lit. closed market). Though I do love Istanbul more than most other cities in Europe.

[#3 posted by grinn.net , February 13, 2008 1:18 PM]

Places like this really fascinate and inspire me. I think I may add this to my list of places I must visit before I die.

[#4 posted by peterb , February 14, 2008 3:57 AM]

I was at this shop last week. It is pretty awesome - a sea of brass. If you want to buy anything in the bazaar you can generally haggle it down to at least half of what they offer.

My photos from Istanbul are at http://flickr.com/photos/peterbraden/sets/72157603886835349/ if anyone is interested.

[#5 posted by m1k3y , February 15, 2008 3:33 AM]

@Alper Çugun

I have to agree. Crossing the street to that souk, standing next to a man astride a donkey was one of the highlights of my trip through Syria.

The souks of the Middle East are so amazing. This post has me nostaglic for my time there.