Dolapdere & Piyalepaşa

Walk north from the noise of İstiklal and the ground drops into Dolapdere — until recently one of the last working-class neighbourhoods in central Istanbul, a hillside of auto-repair shops, informal housing and mannequin workshops. Then the galleries came, and they came big. Arter landed here in 2019, an 18,000-square-metre contemporary art museum sheathed in hand-glazed tiles, dropped into the middle of the car mechanics like a spaceship. Around it, the serious commercial galleries took warehouse-scale spaces the old neighbourhood could offer and the aptown never could. The contrast is the whole character: a Grimshaw building and a tyre shop on the same street.