Reading list | Nişantaşı

Where the well-heeled shopper meets the expense-account lunch, these three quarters are a short hop by metro or taxi from Taksim Square. Although these days many of the more elegant apartments house professionals and their practices rather than families, the back streets and arcades – with their pastry shops, sushi joints and delicatessens – still cater to a discerning gentility. Harbiye is where the street from Taksim Square, Cumhuriyet Caddesi, divides and becomes Halaskargazi Caddesi and Valikonağı Caddesi. Nişantaşı takes its name from a modest obelisk at the crossroads of Valikonağı Caddesi and Teşvikiye Caddesi/Rumeli Caddesi – it recalls a particularly well shot arrow. Life (and death) revolve around the gigantic American Hospital, further down Valikonağı Caddesi, but hidden behind the old English High School, and the 19th-century Teşvikiye Camii. Maçka has Abdi İpekçi Caddesi – Istanbul’s Bond Street – at its core, and looks out over a wooded park little changed since Zonaro sketched it circa 1900. Follow Rumeli Caddesi to its traffic snarled conclusion and you arrive at the Osmanbey metro station, where part 2 of the story begins.