Moda is one of the few corners of Istanbul where the shoreline faces open sea instead of traffic, and where people come simply to sit and look at it. The name is often traced to the Italian and French word for "fashion" — a nod to the Levantine and well-to-do families who made this leafy promontory their summer quarter in the nineteenth century, on a shore that looks straight across the water at the minarets of the old city. On the tip, a small late-Ottoman ferry hall built in 1917 still stands over the sea, serving tea instead of tickets.
Today Moda is the city's most unhurried shoreline. A wide grass slope runs down to the rocks, and on any clear evening it fills with people who have come for one thing: the sun setting behind the skyline of the old city across the water. The Princes' Islands sit on the far horizon and catch the last light. Behind the grass, narrow streets hold secondhand bookshops, tea gardens and an ice-cream counter with a patient queue. A single-carriage heritage tram still rattles a slow loop through the quarter, and people stay on the grass for hours after the light has gone.