Explore the real-world places that appear in Atlas of Cloudy Continents by İhsan Oktay Anar. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı), Sahaflar Çarşısı (Book Market), Galata Tower, Golden Horn (Haliç), Bayezid Mosque & Square and 7 more.
Beyazıt, Fatih — Center of merchants, guilds, and intrigue
The Grand Bazaar forms a crucial backdrop for the novel's guild culture and the mysterious world of artisans and craftsmen who populate Anar's seventeenth-century Istanbul. The labyrinthine corridors of the bazaar mirror the novel's own dense, interlocking narrative structure, where characters pursue arcane knowledge among the stalls of booksellers, metalworkers, and apothecaries. The protagonist Bünyamin and other characters move through this maze-like space as they seek clues to deeper mysteries.
The Grand Bazaar was constructed under Sultan Mehmed II beginning in 1455, shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. It expanded over centuries to become one of the world's largest and oldest covered markets, with over 4,000 shops at its peak. It served as the commercial heart of the Ottoman Empire, regulating trade guilds and setting standards for craftsmanship.
The Grand Bazaar remains one of Istanbul's primary tourist attractions and a functioning market with over 4,000 shops. It draws millions of visitors annually and continues to sell jewelry, textiles, ceramics, leather, and spices. It is a UNESCO-listed historic monument.
Visit: Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) (historic site)
Beyazıt, adjacent to Grand Bazaar — The world of manuscripts and secret texts
The Sahaflar Çarşısı is emblematic of the novel's obsession with hidden knowledge, rare manuscripts, and forbidden texts. In Anar's baroque narrative, booksellers and scribes trade not merely in words but in secrets — maps to cloudy continents that may or may not exist. Characters like the learned Katip Çelebi figure haunt such spaces, and the used-book market represents the threshold between scholarship and mysticism that defines the novel's tone.
The Sahaflar Çarşısı, or Market of Second-Hand Booksellers, has existed on this site since Byzantine times when it traded in manuscripts and papyrus. After the Ottoman conquest it became a center for Islamic manuscript trade. It was a vital institution for the transmission of knowledge in the early modern Ottoman world.
The Sahaflar Çarşısı still operates as Istanbul's traditional used and antiquarian book market. It sells academic texts, rare Ottoman-era books, and modern Turkish literature. It remains a beloved cultural institution and is freely accessible to visitors.
Visit: Sahaflar Çarşısı (historic site)
Galata, Beyoğlu — Tower of observation, alchemy, and the beyond
Galata Tower looms over the novel as a symbol of aspiration toward impossible knowledge. In Anar's seventeenth-century Istanbul, the tower is associated with the legendary flight of Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi — a figure emblematic of the novel's theme of men who transgress the limits of the known world. The tower serves as a point from which characters observe the dual city of Istanbul straddling two continents, a metaphor for the 'cloudy continents' of the title that exist at the edge of perception and certainty.
Galata Tower was built by the Genoese in 1348 as the Tower of Christ, the tallest structure in the medieval city's Genoese colony. Under the Ottomans it served various purposes including a fire watchtower and prison. The legendary aviator Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi is said to have glided from its summit across the Bosphorus around 1638.
Galata Tower is one of Istanbul's most iconic landmarks and tourist destinations. After extensive restoration, it reopened in 2020 with a museum inside documenting its history. An observation deck at the top offers panoramic views of Istanbul and the Bosphorus.
Visit: Galata Tower (monument)
Estuary between Eminönü and Galata — Waterway of secrets and passage
The Golden Horn is woven through the novel as a literal and figurative boundary. Characters cross its waters by caique in the dim hours before dawn, carrying cryptic messages and contraband knowledge. The fog that settles on the Horn in early morning is the very 'haziness' invoked by the novel's title — a physical manifestation of the blurred continents between the known and the imagined. The boatmen and sailors who haunt its shores are among the novel's most vivid minor characters.
The Golden Horn has been one of the world's great natural harbors since antiquity. It provided Constantinople with a sheltered port and served as the principal naval base for both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. The great chain stretched across its mouth to defend the city was famously breached by Mehmed II in 1453.
The Golden Horn is now lined with parks, museums, and cultural venues following extensive environmental cleanup in the 1980s and 2000s. The Rahmi M. Koç Museum and Miniaturk park are among its attractions. Historic wooden bridges and ferry lines still cross its waters.
Visit: Golden Horn Waterfront (landmark)
Bayezid, Fatih — Heart of the Ottoman scholarly quarter
Bayezid Square and its mosque represent the religious and intellectual authority against which the novel's heterodox seekers position themselves. The ulema who convene in the mosque's shadow debate the permissibility of the kind of cartographic and cosmological speculation that drives the novel's plot. Characters pass through this square as a reminder of orthodoxy's weight upon those who seek knowledge of cloudy, unmapped territories beyond the sanctioned Islamic world.
The Bayezid Mosque, completed in 1506, is the oldest surviving imperial mosque in Istanbul built after the Ottoman conquest. It was commissioned by Sultan Bayezid II and established a template for subsequent Ottoman mosque architecture. The square in front of it has been a public gathering place for centuries.
The Bayezid Mosque remains an active place of worship and a significant architectural landmark. Bayezid Square in front of it is a lively public space frequented by students from Istanbul University next door. The area is freely accessible and a central hub of the old city.
Visit: Bayezid Mosque (historic site)
Eminönü — Spice market, apothecaries, and alchemical materials
The Spice Bazaar is central to the novel's alchemical and pharmacological subplots. In Anar's world, the apothecaries and herbalists of the Egyptian Bazaar supply the ingredients for both medicine and mystery — compounds that blur the boundary between the waking world and visionary states. Characters purchase strange substances here that allow them to glimpse, however fleetingly, the contours of continents that no map has yet recorded.
The Egyptian Bazaar was built in 1660 as part of the Yeni Cami complex, funded by customs revenues from Egypt — hence its name. It became the center of Istanbul's spice and medicinal herb trade, stocked by caravans arriving from Egypt, Persia, India, and the Far East. It was also a major supplier of dyestuffs, incense, and pharmaceutical ingredients.
The Egyptian Bazaar continues to operate as a covered spice and food market, selling herbs, teas, Turkish delight, nuts, and traditional remedies. It is one of Istanbul's most visited tourist sites and remains commercially active. Restoration work has preserved its Ottoman architectural character.
Visit: Egyptian Bazaar (Mısır Çarşısı) (historic site)
Sarayburnu, Fatih — Imperial power and the cartographic archive
Topkapı Palace represents the apex of worldly power in the novel — the seat of the Sultan whose cartographers and navigators are tasked with mapping the known world, yet whose maps always leave certain continents clouded and unnamed. The imperial archives housed within the palace hold manuscripts and charts that the novel's characters desperately seek. The palace's inner courtyard is the scene of a crucial confrontation between a character who has discovered forbidden geographic knowledge and the agents of the state who would suppress it.
Topkapı Palace was built by Mehmed II beginning around 1459 and served as the primary residence and administrative center of the Ottoman sultans for nearly four centuries. It contained the imperial treasury, the harem, the divan where the council of state met, and vast libraries of manuscripts including unique geographic and scientific texts. At its height it housed thousands of people.
Topkapı Palace is one of Turkey's most visited museums, operated by the Ministry of Culture. It houses extraordinary collections of imperial treasures, Islamic relics, manuscripts, and Ottoman artifacts. Visitors can tour the harem, treasury, and multiple palace courtyards.
Visit: Topkapı Palace Museum (museum)
Eminönü-Galata — Crossing between two worlds
The bridge connecting Eminönü to Galata is in Anar's novel a threshold space where characters from different worlds and social strata collide. Merchants, dervishes, sailors, and scholars all cross this same narrow passage, and it is here that chance encounters set significant portions of the plot in motion. The bridge over the Golden Horn represents the porous boundary between the European-inflected Galata and the Ottoman heartland of Stamboul — two overlapping worlds as distinct as continents.
A bridge at this location over the Golden Horn has existed in various forms since Byzantine times. The Ottoman sultans maintained wooden pontoon bridges at this crossing from the early period of their rule. The current modern Galata Bridge, completed in 1994, replaced a late-nineteenth-century iron bridge that itself replaced earlier structures.
The current Galata Bridge is a functioning road bridge with a lower level of restaurants and tea houses. It is famous for the dozens of fishermen who line its rails at all hours. The bridge is freely accessible and a beloved part of Istanbul's daily life.
Visit: Galata Bridge (landmark)
Süleymaniye, Fatih — The summit of Ottoman intellectual life
The Süleymaniye complex is the spiritual and intellectual center of the novel's world. Its library holds the manuscripts and cosmographical texts that the characters obsessively seek. The learned figures who debate the nature of the cloudy continents do so in the shadow of this great mosque. Anar uses the mosque's commanding position on the third hill of Istanbul — overlooking the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus — to symbolize the altitude from which one might, in theory, glimpse the edges of the world.
The Süleymaniye Mosque was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent and completed by the architect Sinan in 1558. It is the largest mosque in Istanbul and the centerpiece of a vast complex including a hospital, caravanserai, hamam, schools, and a library. The library remains one of the most important repositories of Ottoman-era manuscripts in existence.
The Süleymaniye Mosque is an active place of worship and a major historic landmark open to visitors. The Süleymaniye Library, housed in the complex, is a functioning research library containing over 70,000 manuscripts and is accessible to scholars. The entire complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Visit: Süleymaniye Mosque (historic site)
Between European and Asian Istanbul — The ultimate boundary
The Bosphorus is the novel's ultimate geographical metaphor — the strait that physically embodies the concept of a 'cloudy continent,' a boundary between two worlds that is neither one nor the other. Characters who sail its waters at night, in the dense fogs that characterize winter crossings, experience a dissolution of certainty about where they are or to what known world they belong. The Bosphorus is where the novel's geography opens outward toward the unmapped seas and continents of its title.
The Bosphorus Strait, approximately 30 kilometers long and less than a kilometer wide at its narrowest, has been one of the world's most strategically vital waterways since antiquity. It was the key to control of trade between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and the reason Constantinople was founded on its European shore. Countless civilizations fought for control of its banks.
The Bosphorus remains one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, with thousands of vessels transiting annually. Istanbul's famous ferry lines cross and travel its length, offering scenic routes between European and Asian neighborhoods. Its shores are lined with historic yalıs (waterfront mansions), fortresses, and public parks.
Visit: Bosphorus Cruise (tour)
Istanbul University Campus, Beyazıt — Surveillance and hidden vision
The fire watchtower of Beyazıt is a place of elevated perception in the novel — from its heights, watchmen claim to see fires that have not yet started, or smoke rising from directions that cannot be named on any existing map. Anar weaves this into his broader theme of visionary knowledge: the watchers who detect catastrophe before it arrives are figures for the novel's navigators of the unmapped, those who perceive cloudy continents that others deny exist.
The Beyazıt Tower was originally constructed in wood in the eighteenth century as part of Istanbul's fire-watching system. The current stone tower dates to 1828, built during the reign of Mahmud II. At 85 meters tall, it was for a period one of the tallest structures in the city and provided views across the historic peninsula.
The Beyazıt Tower stands within the grounds of Istanbul University and underwent extensive restoration, reopening to visitors in 2021. It now functions as an observation tower with a café at its base and panoramic views of the old city from its top. Visitors can access it during university visiting hours.
Visit: Beyazıt Tower (monument)
Yedikule, Fatih — Prison, punishment, and the margins of empire
Yedikule — the Fortress of Seven Towers — appears in the novel as the place where those who have transgressed the limits of sanctioned knowledge are imprisoned. Characters who have mapped continents the state would prefer to remain clouded, or who have spread cosmographical heresies, find themselves confined within its towers. Anar describes the view from the prison cells with grim irony: the prisoners can see the sea and the horizon beyond which their forbidden continents supposedly lie, but cannot reach them.
Yedikule was built by Mehmed II in 1457 by connecting three Byzantine towers along the land walls to four new Ottoman towers. It served the Ottoman Empire as a treasury, a state archive, and most notoriously as a political prison where foreign ambassadors, deposed officials, and condemned nobles were held. Many prisoners scratched their names and laments into the tower walls, which can still be seen.
Yedikule Fortress is now a museum operated by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Visitors can walk the fortress walls, explore the towers including the infamous 'Tower of Blood' where executions took place, and see historic graffiti left by prisoners. It also hosts outdoor events and concerts.
Visit: Yedikule Fortress Museum (museum)
More by İhsan Oktay Anar: All İhsan Oktay Anar books