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NeighbourhoodWorth your time

İstiklal Avenue & Taksim Square

Walk the 1.4 km avenue that carries over a hundred million people a year, from a Republic-era square down toward the Galata hill.

Two red heritage T2 trams stopped on İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu, with colourful historic façades lining the pedestrian street
Credit: Janderk1968 · License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Historic red tram on the Taksim-Tünel route running along İstiklal Avenue at night, with pedestrians strolling the pavement
Credit: Omer Unlu · License: CC BY 2.0

Enough context, no spoilers

Why it matters

Formerly the Cadde-i Kebir, and to the city's Levantine population the Grande Rue de Péra, the avenue took its present name after the Republic was declared in 1923. It runs 1.4 km and was pedestrianised between the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the heritage tram reinstated in 1990. Taksim means distribution, after the Ottoman reservoir on the square; the Republic Monument was raised in 1928.

What to know before you go

Walk it downhill from Taksim to Tünel and give it ninety minutes with stops, or three hours if you follow the side passages properly. The T2 heritage tram runs the length of it, but it is slower than walking and usually standing room only — ride it for the sake of it, not to get anywhere. Two facts are worth carrying: the avenue's own footfall record was 107 million in 2025, with 240,000 on a weekday and 427,000 on a weekend day, measured in Cushman & Wakefield's March 2026 shopping-streets report; and the widely repeated claim of "three million a day" is wrong by roughly sevenfold. At the Tünel end the funicular drops you to Karaköy, or you continue on foot into Galata.

Look for: Step off the avenue into the side passages — Çiçek Pasajı and the fish market lanes behind it keep the nineteenth-century arcade architecture the main street has largely traded away.