Taksim Square

About this place

The name is Arabic before it is Turkish: a taksim is a place where water is divided, and the squat octagonal stone building on the corner of the square is exactly that, built for Sultan Mahmud I in 1731–32 to share out the water piped from the Belgrade Forest among the fountains of Galata, Pera and Kasımpaşa. The square took its name from it, and modern Istanbul then took its pulse from the square. The building and the old reservoir beside it were restored and reopened in June 2024 as a small Republic Museum; most of the people brushing past have no idea it is the oldest thing in Taksim. In the middle stands the Republic Monument by the Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica, unveiled in August 1928, the year of the Republic's fifth anniversary. Eleven metres tall, it shows Atatürk twice, as a soldier on one face and as a statesman in a civilian suit on the other, with İsmet İnönü and Fevzi Çakmak beside him. Around it the square has been remade in the last few years: the Atatürk Cultural Centre, demolished and rebuilt as an opera and concert house that opened in 2021; Taksim Mosque, opened in May 2021 with room for 3,000 worshippers inside, the first mosque on the square itself after a project argued over since the 1950s, and now part of the skyline; and the gate of little Gezi Park on the northern edge. Be honest with yourself: the square is not a monument you linger in front of. It is a wide, almost shadeless expanse of paving that bakes at noon in August and is crossed by hundreds of people in every direction at once. Its real value is as a starting line. İstiklal Avenue begins here, 1.4 kilometres of car-free walking down to Tünel with the old red tram trundling through the middle, and off it run the passages and side streets: Çiçek Pasajı, the fish market, Galatasaray, Cihangir. Most of the hotels favoured by Gulf visitors sit in the streets around it, so you will cross the square several times a day whether you plan to or not. Getting here needs no car: the M2 metro station is directly beneath the square, and the F1 funicular climbs from Kabataş on the Bosphorus in 110 seconds, where it meets the T1 tram and the ferries. The square is flat and fine for pushchairs, though the post-sunset summer crush makes pushing one slow. On national holidays and New Year's Eve expect police barriers and some entrances closed for a while; it is routine, not a cause for alarm.