Spice Bazaar
The L-shaped 1660s market beside the Eminönü ferries — spices, Turkish delight, dried fruit, cheeses and the city's oldest coffee roaster outside its gate — open seven days, and a better food stop than the Grand Bazaar.
Built in the 1660s to fund the New Mosque beside it, the Egyptian Bazaar took its name from the Cairo customs revenue that paid for it and the spices that arrived via Egypt. Its 85 vaulted shops still sell what they always did, and because it opens on Sundays and sits between the ferries and the Grand Bazaar, it is the market most visitors actually use.
Worth buying
- Spices sold by weight: sumac, pul biber (Aleppo-style pepper flakes), Urfa isot, dried mint, saffron — ask for Iranian or Spanish saffron, not the cheap 'Turkish' safflower.
- Lokum (Turkish delight) with pistachio or pomegranate — taste before buying; the double-roasted pistachio kind is the benchmark.
- Pestil and cevizli sucuk: fruit leather and walnut strings; dried figs and apricots; Turkish coffee ground to order.
- Cheeses, olives and honeycomb inside; the Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi coffee queue outside the west gate since 1871.
Practical
Open daily about 08:00–19:30, later on Sundays and in summer; closed on the first days of Bayram. Prices are marked but negotiable for quantity; the stalls facing the outer streets are cheaper than the ones under the vault. Take the T1 tram to Eminönü. Behind the bazaar, the Rüstem Paşa Mosque (Sinan, 1563) has the finest İznik tiles in the city and almost no visitors.
Frequently asked questions
Yes — it is open seven days a week, roughly 08:00–19:30, closing only on the first days of the Bayram holidays.
