Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

Kapalı Çarşı, the Covered Bazaar, was established by Fatih a few years after the Conquest on its present site and covering almost the same area ¹. Though repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes — the last in 1894 — and fires — most recently in 1954 — it remains essentially the same in structure and appearance as when Fatih built it ².

Its street names come from the guilds that worked there in Ottoman times, such as the Street of the Sword-Makers and the Street of the Turban-Makers ³. At its centre stands the great domed Old Bedesten, one of the original structures of Fatih's time, used then as now for the most precious wares because it can be securely locked at night: fifteen domes in five rows of three on three pairs of rectangular piers, shops lining interior and exterior, entered at the middle of all four sides ³. Across the Golden Horn in Galata a smaller nine-domed bedesten stands; some have dated it later, but the author argues its form and masonry are plainly fifteenth-century Fatih work ⁴.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 123–125 (Kapalı Çarşı; Galata Bedesten).
• Prior short prose resting on Wikidata alone replaced in this batch.