Covered Bazaar

Kapali Carsi - The Covered Bazaar is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. In more than 3500 shops of various kinds, there are more than 20.000 people working. Together with numerous shops selling carpets, cloth and clothes, souvenirs, there are many cafés, tea-houses and restaurants (esp. those called "sofra" that offer special lunch for the business people in the neighborhood.

The market is on its place since Mehmet II conquered the city. It has been rebuild several times since then, the reason for that were catastrophes like the earthquake in 1894 and the big fire in 1954. In spite of these newer construction works, plan and structure of the bazaar are more or less the same as they were in Ottoman times.

A little remark: in the most cases it is not really recommendable to buy in the bazaar (but you should not miss to see it!) - very often you can get the things offered there much cheaper somewhere else. Often, but not always. There can be made same good deals especially in cloths.