İstiklal Avenue

İstiklal Avenue is a pedestrian street of about 1.4 km between Taksim Square and Tünel. The red nostalgic tram runs down the middle, past 19th-century arcades, churches, old consulate buildings, cinemas and bookshops.

Come by day for shopping and cafés, and in the evening for the crowd, the live-music venues and the meyhanes in the side streets. From the Tünel end you can walk down to Galata and Karaköy.

Getting there: take the M2 metro to Taksim, or the F2 Tünel funicular up from Karaköy; the nostalgic tram covers the stretch in between.