New porticoed streets for ancient Istanbul. Innovation and historicism in eighteenth-century Ottoman urban culture

This paper analyzes the emergence of new porticoed commercial arteries in the Ottoman capital starting from that of the Damad İbrahim Paşa complex. Precisely around 1720s, Istanbul became a laboratory for new architectural and urban ideas, thanks to both internal dynamics of the empire and to the intensification of the interactions with foreign cultures. More directly than ever, the architecture of the city started dialoguing with remote sources, exponentially enriching its formal and typological vocabulary. The present study tries to explore the background of this urban novelty with a fresh look, taking in consideration all the factors which rendered eighteenthcentury Istanbul a unique crossroad of people, cultures, and ideas. Interactions with Western Europe, the conquest of new territories in the Aegean, and the possible role of the local Ottoman and pre-Ottoman references are thoroughly discussed to depict a complex a panorama which spans over seven decades, till the completion of the Mihrişah Valide Sultan Complex in 1801.