Beyoğlu & İstiklal

İstiklal Caddesi runs a straight kilometre and a half from Taksim down to the Tünel, and a few million people walk it on a good weekend. Most of them never look up. If they did, they would see that the art is stacked above the shopfronts — in blocks like the Mısır Apartmanı, an Art Nouveau building halfway down, galleries occupy the upper floors one per landing, reached by a lift off a crowded pavement. This is the busiest street in Turkey and one of its densest gallery corridors at the same time, and the two facts sit on top of each other without touching. The art is vertical here. You step off the street and the noise drops away.