Turkey Guide
İstanbul
Kapalı Çarşı: the covered bazaar
Address: Beyazit
Opening time: Mon– Sat 9am–7pm
With sixty-six streets and alleys, over four thousand shops, numerous storehouses, moneychangers and banks, a mosque, post office, police station, private security guards and its own health centre, İstanbul's Kapalı Çarşı is said to be the largest covered bazaar in the world. In addition to the retail outlets the hans or market halls in and around the bazaar are the location of workshops, where craftsmen make some of the goods sold in the bazaar.
Originally, a particular type of shop was found in a certain area, with street names reflecting the nature of the businesses. Many of these distinctions are now blurred because the trade in certain goods has moved on, while that of others has expanded to meet new demands. In Ottoman times the bazaar consisted of both a covered and an open area centred on a bedesten, a domed building where foreign trade took place and valuable goods were stored. In İstanbul the commercial centre was based around two bedestens, both inside the covered bazaar. The Iç Bedesten probably dates from the time of the Conquest, while the Sandal Bedesten was added in the sixteenth century to cope with the quantity of trade in fine fabrics that the capital attracted. However, the bazaar extends much further than the limits of the covered area, sprawling into the streets that lead down to the Golden Horn. This whole area was once controlled by strict laws laid down by the trade guilds, thus reducing competition between traders. Each shop could support just one owner and his apprentice, and successful merchants were not allowed to expand their businesses. Similar unwritten laws control market forces among traders in the covered bazaar even today.