The 5 most notable shopping arcades in Istanbul

The Hak Pasajı is home to tailors, watchmakers, stamp collectors and, most notably, the Orlando Carlo Calumeno shop downstairs. Travel back to Turkey in the 19th and early 20th centuries with beautiful antique objects of daily life as well as an astounding collection of Ottoman postcards.

Underneath a delicate roof of vines and tree branches, the courtyard of the Hazzopulo Pasajı is always alive with people drinking tea, playing backgammon or just curiously wandering about. Built in 1871 by the Greek Hacopulo family of bankers, this particular pasaj was famously frequented by the Ottoman author Ahmet Mithat Efendi and the Young Turks.

With beautiful neoclassical details that unfurl in the lamplight, this arcade gets its name from the Syrian Hasan Halbuni Paşa who commissioned it to the architect Demetre Th. Bassiladis in 1908.

When the Naum Theatre (which hosted Verdi’s Il Trovatore before the Paris opera houses) burned down in 1876, Greek banker Hristaki Zoğrafos Efendi commissioned architect Kleanthis Zannos to build the Cité de Péra. The arcade got its present name (‘Flower Arcade’) from the impoverished noble Russian women who sold flowers there after the Russian Revolution.

Past the decorative marble and wroughtiron entrance of this neo-renaissance arcade, 22 stores (mostly selling lovely antiques) stretch down one passageway underneath a glass roof. Built in 1874 by the architect Domenico Pulgher, the arcade’s upper levels are decorated with sculptures and Corinthian columns.