Nisantasi, Taksim & Beyoglu Tour (Private) - Istiklal Avenue & Galata

Highlights of the Private Nisantasi, Taksim & Beyoglu Tour

This private half-day walking tour follows a fixed, mostly downhill route through modern Istanbul's best-known neighbourhoods. Your vehicle drops you in Nisantasi, the city's most elegant shopping district; from there you walk with your licensed guide to Taksim Square, all the way down Istiklal Avenue to Tünel Square and on past Galata Tower to Karaköy, where the car is waiting to take you back to your hotel. In about five hours you see the boutiques of Nisantasi, the monuments of Taksim and the passages, churches and late-Ottoman façades of Beyoglu, without ever having to walk back uphill.

• Nisantasi – Abdi Ipekci Avenue, Tesvikiye Mosque and a coffee break among the boutiques
• Taksim Square – the Republic Monument (1928) and the rebuilt Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM)
• Istiklal Avenue – Beyoglu's 1.4 km pedestrian boulevard, where the red nostalgic tram still runs
• Çiçek Pasajı and Balık Pazarı – the Flower Passage and the old fish market lanes
• Hagia Triada and St. Anthony of Padua – landmark Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches
• Tünel Square – the upper station of the underground funicular opened in 1875
• Galata Tower – the Genoese tower of 1348, reached via Galip Dede Street
• Camondo Stairs – the curving 19th-century staircase down to Karaköy

Nisantasi – Istanbul's shopping district

Nisantasi takes its name from the marker stones (nisan tasi) set up by Sultans Selim III and Mahmud II during their archery and shooting practice. In the 19th century, after the Ottoman court moved to the Bosphorus palaces of Dolmabahçe and later Yıldız, pashas, diplomats and wealthy families built mansions and apartment buildings here, and the district became a byword for elegance – it is also where the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk grew up. On this Istanbul shopping district tour you start on Abdi Ipekci Avenue, lined with Turkish and international fashion houses, see Tesvikiye Mosque – first built in 1794 and rebuilt in 1854 – and the Art Nouveau and early Republican façades of the side streets, and stop for coffee before setting off on foot towards Taksim.

Taksim, Istiklal Avenue and Beyoglu

Beyoglu grew out of Pera, the hillside quarter above Galata where foreign embassies, merchants and Levantine families settled in Ottoman times. Its main street, the Grande Rue de Péra, was renamed Istiklal Caddesi – Independence Avenue – in 1923, and today this pedestrian boulevard is the liveliest street in Istanbul. On this Istiklal Avenue tour you see Hagia Triada, the domed Greek Orthodox church completed in 1880; Çiçek Pasajı, the Flower Passage built in 1876 as the Cité de Péra; the gates of Galatasaray High School, whose modern lycée opened in 1868 and whose roots go back to a palace school founded in 1481; and St. Anthony of Padua, the red-brick neo-Gothic church that is the largest Roman Catholic church in the city. At Tünel Square you see the station of the Tünel, an underground funicular opened in 1875 and often called the second-oldest underground railway in the world after London's. Galip Dede Street then leads down to Galata Tower, raised by the Genoese in 1348, and the Camondo Stairs, built by the Camondo banking family in the late 19th century, bring you down to Karaköy on the Golden Horn.

Who is this private walking tour for?

This Taksim and Nisantasi tour suits first-time visitors who want to understand modern Istanbul beyond the Old City, couples and families who prefer their own guide to a crowded group, and shoppers looking for an introduction to Nisantasi's boutiques. As a private Beyoglu tour on a fixed, mostly downhill walking route it is easy for most travellers, it runs every day at a start time that suits you, and it combines well with an Old City or Bosphorus tour on another day of your stay.