Karaköy & Tophane

Karaköy is where the city meets the water. The old Galata docks, the ferries crossing to Eminönü, and now Galataport — the reworked cruise terminal that put a kilometre of Bosphorus shorefront back into public use. Istanbul Modern sits inside it, a Renzo Piano building of glass and steel with a rooftop that reads the strait like a map. Walk back from the water into Tophane and the register changes: narrow streets, restored Ottoman hans, a scatter of independent galleries and the coffee-roast smell that the neighbourhood is half-famous for. The institutional and the scruffy sit two streets apart. The waterline organises everything.