Çiçek Pasajı is a glass-roofed arcade off İstiklal Avenue, a hall of marble, mirrors and wrought-iron balconies with taverns spilling small tables beneath the vaulted skylight. After dark, fasıl music and clinking glasses carry late into the night. It is the most storied of the covered passages threading off the avenue. The others are a few steps away: secondhand book stalls, tiny record shops, and the peeling grandeur of the Avrupa Pasajı.
The arcade opened in 1876 as the Cité de Péra, built by an Ottoman Greek banker, and earned its flower-passage name only decades later. It changed names with its owners: Hristaki Pasajı first, then Sait Paşa Pasajı after a grand vizier bought it in 1908, until the flower sellers renamed it for good. Around it, Levantine, Greek and Armenian merchants raised a whole family of arcades and lined them with jewellers, booksellers and boutiques. Step into the quieter ones and the crowds thin until footsteps echo. Each keeps a different fragment of a cosmopolitan city that has mostly faded from the street outside.