Grand Bazaar: The Cevahir Bedesten
Why is it significant?
Step under the painted vaults of the Grand Bazaar and let the street carry you, past gold and carpets and lamps, until the ceiling suddenly changes. The thin plastered arches give way to heavy stone, and the light falls from small high windows.
Key Facts
| Place | Grand Bazaar: The Cevahir Bedesten |
|---|---|
| Address | Beyazıt, Kalpakçılar Caddesi, 34126 Fatih/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.01060, 28.96840 |
| Part of Walk | Sinan's City: Istanbul from the Grand Bazaar to Süleymaniye |
| Generated | Generated |
Step under the painted vaults of the Grand Bazaar and let the street carry you, past gold and carpets and lamps, until the ceiling suddenly changes. The thin plastered arches give way to heavy stone, and the light falls from small high windows. You have just entered the bedesten, the seed from which the whole bazaar grew.
Only a few years after the conquest of 1453, Mehmed II ordered a fortified hall for the most valuable goods in the city. It is roughly a rectangle of stone, covered by fifteen small domes, with walls thick enough to survive a siege. Its rents went to the religious foundation of Hagia Sophia, newly turned into a mosque, so every jewel sold here helped pay for the great dome down the hill.
At night the iron doors were locked and guarded. Merchants, widows and even officials deposited cash, deeds and jewellery here, so for centuries the bedesten worked as something close to a bank vault. Its other name is Cevahir Bedesteni, the jewellers' hall, and it still sells antique silver, old coins and the kind of objects that come with stories.
Around this stone core, the market spread like a city. Workshops, inns called hans, mosques, fountains and lanes were added and roofed over, until the Kapalıçarşı, the covered bazaar, held some sixty streets and several thousand shops. Fires in 1546 and 1660 and an earthquake in 1894 damaged it badly, and every time it was rebuilt. Each trade had its own street, and you can still read them in the names: Kalpakçılar for the hatmakers, Yağlıkçılar for the makers of handkerchiefs.
Guides like to say you can get lost here for a day. It is true, and it is the point. But we are heading for a quieter kind of treasure. Leave the bedesten by its western door, follow the lanes towards the Beyazıt Gate, and just before it, slip into the little courtyard of the booksellers.