Nişantaşı, Teşvikiye & Şişli

Nişantaşı is where Istanbul dresses up. The uptown grid — Abdi İpekçi, Teşvikiye, Vali Konağı — is the city's luxury-retail heart, international fashion houses and pastry shops and doctors' practices in handsome nineteenth-century apartment blocks, and the art here has always worn the same tailoring. Boutique-scaled galleries tuck into the side streets and upper floors around Teşvikiye and Şakayık, serving collectors who live within walking distance. The obelisk that gave the district its name — Nişantaşı, "the marker stone" — still stands at the crossroads. This is the polished, moneyed register of the city's art scene, and it reads as such.