Moda Caddesi & the Nostalgic Tram

Why is it significant?

Here the city changes its rhythm. The plane trees close overhead, the apartment buildings grow taller and older, with iron balconies and carved doorways, and the people walk a little slower, often with a dog. Welcome to Moda Caddesi, the main street of Moda.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Here the city changes its rhythm. The plane trees close overhead, the apartment buildings grow taller and older, with iron balconies and carved doorways, and the people walk a little slower, often with a dog. Welcome to Moda Caddesi, the main street of Moda.

In the nineteenth century Moda was a green, quiet peninsula of summer houses, and it attracted the Levantines, European families, many of them English, French and Italian, who had lived and traded in the Ottoman Empire for generations. Some of the English families of Moda were great enthusiasts of sport, and football was played in Kadıköy before the end of the century. When Fenerbahçe was founded in 1907, it was born into a district that already knew the game.

Listen for a bell. A small vintage tram regularly rattles round a loop through Kadıköy and Moda. It is the nostalgic tram, running since 2003, and it is an echo of the real thing: electric trams served the Asian side for decades in the twentieth century, until they were taken off in the 1960s and the buses took over. Locals love it, cyclists curse its rails, and children wave at the driver.

Moda is also where generations of Istanbulites come for ice cream on summer evenings, and the queues on warm nights can reach round the corner. Turkish dondurma is made with salep, a flour ground from wild orchid roots, which gives it that famous chewy, stretchy texture... so stretchy it can be cut with a knife. The ice cream sellers of the old city used to tease their customers with long metal paddles, a show you may still catch today.

Look at the façades as you go: dates over the doors, names of old apartment buildings in faded letters, Greek and French and Turkish all mixed together. Then turn right, down towards the cliffs, and follow the smell of brewing tea to the park above the sea.