Pera & Tepebaşı

Cross to the western edge of Beyoğlu and the crowds thin. Tepebaşı sits one street back from İstiklal, along Meşrutiyet Caddesi, looking out over the Golden Horn from the high side — and it carries the museums. Pera Museum occupies the old Bristol Hotel, a restored nineteenth-century building holding Orientalist painting on one floor and international contemporary shows on another. Along the same avenue, commercial galleries have taken the calmer frontages — the ones that wanted an İstiklal address without İstiklal's noise. The scale is intimate. The pace is different.