Reading list | Karaköy

The districts that form the  entrance to the old European quarters is still a hive of metal workers and light shops, docks and brothels, schools and churches, banks and tax offices, with nightclubs lurking among the anchors and the pots and pans. Between the two bridges (the Galata Bridge and the Atatürk Bridge – now joined by a hdeous new third metro bridge with mercifully-not-golden horns) is Perşembe Pazarı, the wonderful hardware district. Above it old Bankalar Caddesi, full of light shops, and home to SALT Galata, the majestic former Ottoman Bank, now an arts centre, climbs the hill to Beyoğlu. Along the shore of the Bosphorus Karaköy proper is a grid of 19th- and early-20th-century streets and extends all the way to the district of Tophane, where the grandest private art galleries and the modern art museum Istanbul Modern has opened in former warehouses.