Wander the multitude of shops, feast your eyes on the colorful array of offerings, and haggle for traditional Turkish goods at Kapali Carsi, one of the world's oldest and largest covered markets. This bazaar, home to over 4,000 artisan shops, is essentially a maze of sheltered streets featuring Turkish carpets, ceramics, lamps, scarves, jewelry, and more. Located in the "Walled City," the site dates back to the 15th century. Today crowds from cruise ships swarm the bazaar in the summertime and visitors to the city spend hours bargaining with merchants. Enjoy the enthusiastic vendors, who will typically offer you Turkish coffee or tea while you peruse their goods. Plan your Kapali Carsi visit and explore what else you can see and do in Istanbul using our Istanbul online day trip planner.
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Kapali Carsi reviews
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It is interesting to visit the Grand Bazar, you will see many typical products, it is very large. The sellers can be funny. However we noticed that you can buy, for example, Turkish delight for...
It is interesting to visit the Grand Bazar, you will see many typical products, it is very large. The sellers can be funny. However we noticed that you can buy, for example, Turkish delight for... more »
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The vaulted arcades are stunningly beautiful and the colourful displays of sweets, spices and knickknacks are a great place to wander around and soak up the experience. It’s busy and buzzing and...
The vaulted arcades are stunningly beautiful and the colourful displays of sweets, spices and knickknacks are a great place to wander around and soak up the experience. It’s busy and buzzing and... more »
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Every year we visit Istanbul and without fail we will always pop into the bazaar as it has culture and history literally oozing from every angle it’s simply amazing. From the architecture all the way to the stalls which varies from herbs and spices to clothing it just speaks for itself, it’s just sometimes when we visit you always get spoken to by sellers while your walking which is usually expected in environments like this as everyone is out to make money but sometimes you just want to walk and shop in peace or even engage in conversation with the stall owners but always end up having someone just stick to you like glue and make you just walk away, they should really get together and stop this as on many occasions from personal experience makes me walk away from actually buying something as they will simply just not let you go which is a big loss for the stall owner. They should really try and find a resolution for this as I am sure I am not the only one that gets irritated by this.
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Anyone who comes here needs to have good bargaining skills. That’s the fun part of shopping here. But overall there are things here you can’t buy anywhere else. We walked through and bought so many things like prayer rugs and souvenirs. They also have spices and juice shops you can get fresh juice at. Watch them juice a whole pomegranate and enjoy the freshness of the juice. You can’t find this anywhere else. I took my mom here and she loved every minute of it. She will be back, probably just to come back to the bazaar.
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