Istiklal Caddesi is the pedestrianised Beyoglu street that runs from Taksim Square to the Tünel with the nostalgic tram (see p.8 ) creaking and rattling down the middle of it. In the 19th century this was the heart of Pera, the most westernised part of ‹s

8am

Where else could you start a stroll along İstiklal Caddesi other than Taksim Square, home to a monument that symbolises modern Turkey? Designed by the Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica and the architect Guilio Mongeri it shows, on one side, Atatürk as a war hero leading Turkey to victory in the War of Independence (1919-23) and, on the other, Atatürk as the founder of the Republic in 1923. Not far away, as you turn down the start of İstiklal, there's a little octagonal building with stone birdhouses on its façade. A taksim, or water distribution point, it gave its name to the square. Some day soon it's slated to become a museum.
This early on a Sunday morning even generally busy İstiklal is still half-asleep. However, in Sütiş at No 13 they're already doing a roaring trade in bal kaymaklı kahvaltı, a twist on the conventional Turkish cheese/olives/tomatoes and cucumber breakfast that comes with a plate of thick fresh cream and wonderfully runny honey (YTL6.50). The Simit Sarayı (Simit Palace) just down the road is also up and running, but most other shops are still resolutely shuttered and the Street's most conspicuous customers appear to be a collection of hurdacılar, rag-and-bone men who push wooden carts up and down in it in search of resaleable rubbish. Pickings  are thin on the ground, although one man has harvested a typewriter so old and dusty even a museum would probably reject it.

10am

If you want to see inside some of the 19th-century churches that loiter on either side of İstiklal Caddesi, then Sunday is probably the best day for a visit. Largest and most conspicuous is Haghia Triada (the Church of the Holy Trinity) which stands just to the left as you start off down the street from Taksim Square – its dome and towers are visible above the roof of Burger King. Dating back to 1880, the church was recently restored. Its interior is now all smooth grey marble, and grey and blue painted ceilings but service attendance is so low that the officiating priest has his hands casually tucked inside his robe as if trying to keep them warm. Hard as it is to believe it, between this half-forgotten church and the more famous Aya Sofya in Sultanahmet there runs a thin thread of history that trails right back to Byzantium.
Further along the street at neo-Gothic
St Anthony's business is altogether brisker. The priest is preaching against the sin of cheating to a congregation largely drawn from İstanbul's all-but-invisible black African community, a community dragged unwillingly into the limelight recently with the unexplained death in police custody of a Nigerian man. In between these two large churches a crowdette of Dutch citizens is hurrying towards the Union Church attached to the Dutch Consulate, a reminder that the churches still perform the important social function of providing meeting places for otherwise scattered communities.

Noon

By mid-day the street is getting busy. A group of French tourists are hovering around the window of the Saray Pudding Shop (see p. 41 ) while their guide explains the delights of güllaç to them. A short, stocky man with a moustache that threatens to eclipse his face and a fabric rose pinned to his hat is striding purposefully along the tramline. The lapels of his suit are encrusted with badges extolling the virtues of peace and faith in Atatürk, and he clutches a tesbih (rosary) of outsize wooden beads. Later, I come across him again sitting on the steps beside the Konak Restaurant. He looks the sort of man who, in London, would haunt Speaker's Corner shouting his thoughts at passers-by through a megaphone. I try my best to engage him in conversation but he's having none of it. Even his name, he suggests, is a state secret, with a swift hand drawn across his mouth. 'Dostluk' (friendship) is the one word I manage to extract from him.
Strolling along the street, it's impossible not to notice the fine buildings that once served as foreign embassies but which were downgraded to consulates when the capital was moved to Ankara. First off is the French consulate built on the site of an 18-century plague hospital. A little further down comes the rather unexpected sight of the blue and white flag flying over the Greek consulate. Even further down stand the matching Dutch and Russian consulates. Then, finally, just before the Tünel comes the Swedish consulate. You can usually tell the state of relations between Turkey and these countries by the presence or absence of police crash barriers in front of their consulates. At the moment it is the turn of the Swedes to be fenced in as a result of yet another Prophet Mohammed cartoon fiasco (really – do people never learn?).

2pm

Despite its being Ramazan, the Konak Restaurant, opposite the famous Çicek Pasajı, is doing a brisk trade in lunches, predominantly tasty İskender kebaps (döner kebap served on pide with yoghurt and a hot butter sauce). In its 19th-century heyday İstiklal Caddesi was lined with grand buildings with equally grand interiors. To a large extent the grand exteriors still remain. The grand interiors, however, are fast vanishing and Konak is one of the few restaurants that still retains its original plastered ceilings and hefty chandeliers.
Across the road from Konak is the entrance to the Balık Pazarı, the historic fish market and one of the more recent recipients of a facelift, courtesy of the Beyoğlu Beautification Project (Güzel Beyoğlu Projesi or GBP). The GBP seemed like a good idea when it started a few years ago, and it has certainly had some beneficial effects in terms of the restoration of some old buildings. On the other hand it has also scored some spectacular own goals. First out of the GBP ideas hat, for example, was an insistence that every shop should take down its fascia and replace it with a new one featuring gold lettering on a brown background. There was nothing wrong with this idea in principle although it was interesting to discover how unsettling it was not to be able to pick out from a distance the colours one associated with different banks, etc. But the biggest problem was that, for long-term success, this scheme required that all new businesses would have to sign up to it too. Which, of course, they didn't. Which means that four years down the line we're back to the same old pick-and-mix bag of colour schemes…
Own goal number two was the decision to repave İstiklal, a simple enough matter, one would have thought, especially given all the repaving that had taken place elsewhere in the city. The old trees that lined the street were duly ripped up and, for best part of a year, so were stretches of the street. Then the project was completed and at once there was an outcry. It turned out that the stones used to repave the street were not just the wrong kind of stones (too easily broken) but had also been imported from China. Amid a nationalist panic, the whole street had to be dug up again and relaid with certified Turkish granite. The result is a dreary grey floor that has done little to add to the street's appearance.
In the Balık Pazarı people are busy buying fried and stuffed mussels, or sandwiches stuffed with kokoreç (grilled intestines) or tantuni (spiced mince). Further into the market they're snapping up huge walnuts from Sapanca, caviar imported from Iran and hard-to-find wholewheat tortillas. 'Beautification' of the fish market consisted of stripping away the awnings that used to shade it. Has it worked? Well, frankly it seems to have stripped away much of the character too.
4pm

İstiklal Caddesi is home to several small art galleries, most of them owned by the banks. The best is the Yapı Kredi Taşkent Galerisi, near the point where the street divides into two beside the huge Galatasaray Lisesi (high school) and the militaristic monument celebrating the first 50 years of the Republic. This month it is hosting 'Erratum Musicale' by the Turkish artist Füsun Onur, which is one for connoisseurs of conceptual art only. Down the road at the Garanti Galerisi, however, most people (especially women) will be able to amuse themselves with fashion-hacking, the idea behind an exhibition that teaches people how to create completely new items out of old clothes.
İstiklal is also a very popular place to come to shop, although the type of shopping that is going on here is changing fast. Just a few years ago the anchor for all the other shops was the huge Vakko department store, an upmarket warehouse full of things rich, luxurious and infinitely unaffordable. But, in a sign of the times, Vakko has pulled out of İstiklal, its place soon to be taken by a branch of the Spanish chain store Mango. Levi's, Adidas, Accessorize, Top Shop – all have made their home here over the last two years, repeating the globalising pattern already obvious in cities all over Europe. Nowadays if you want to shop for something non-chain you are increasingly thrown back on the small pasajs that run off both sides of İstiklal. In search of a replica Anatolian love amulet, for example, or a pair of men's size 55 shoes? Then why not try the Halep Pasajı, just across from the Konak.
Outside the Botter House at No 235 a group of Turks are listening to an architectural expert explain the building's significance. If ever there was a place where the GBP should have made a start, then this building was surely it. A superb example of Art Nouveau by the Italian architect Raimondo  D'Aronco, it was built for Sultan Abdül Hamit's tailor in 1900-01. Unfortunately what should be the pride of the street, with its stone roses and wonderfully decorative ironwork, is instead a blackened shell more or less held together with scaffolding.

6pm

Six o'clock and it's time for tea. These days you're spoilt for choice of places to rest your aching feet, although as with the shops, so with the cafes – three branches of Starbucks and three of Gloria Jean's at the last count. If you don't want to give the international companies your business there are still a few alternatives such as the historic Markiz with its magnificent tiling (this, too, is now part of a chain, albeit Finnish), the Barcelona Patisserie or the Lebon. The hoardings up around another building trumpet the imminent arrival of a Schillers coffee-house. 'Would you like to join the Schiller family?' reads the staff recruitment poster. It all sounds so cosy, until you realise that it will be just another nail in the cloning coffin that will see İstiklal end up a mirror image of city-centre thoroughfares worldwide.
As the evening gets into its stride, so the street is filling up with promenaders. Struggling to attract their attention are a motley band of salespeople hawking packets of tissues, plastic bags full of lavender, cheap socks and knock-off perfumes. There is also a growing band of buskers, many of them youthful student types banging on drums, but with a handful of saz and accordion players thrown in for good measure. But İstiklal hangs onto its uncanny ability to surprise. Here on the steps of the Yapı Kredi Gallery, for example, I come across a man playing a kemence, a three-stringed violin from the Black Sea. Of course he has attracted an enthusiastic entourage of Black Sea dancers, who perform an impromptu horon (Black Sea dance) in the middle of the road. Shortly afterwards I am nearly floored by two cameraman striding swiftly backwards as they film a poet reciting from his latest oeuvre amid the hurly-burly of prime-time İstiklal.

8pm

By early evening most people have their sights set on finding somewhere to eat. There's no shortage of choices, whether your tastes run to the cheap döners-to-go at the Taksim end of the street or to the hyper-trendy offerings to be found in Asmalımescit, at the Tünel end. Amongst other things in this newly-fashionable area, you'll find meyhanes (tavernas) spilling out onto the pavements in an apparent attempt to steal the thunder from Nevizade Sokak, behind the Balık Pazarı; Saf, the city's one and only vegan and raw-food restaurant; the Lokal which serves fusion Thai, Indian and Turkish food; and KV, in the pretty Art Nouveau passageway opposite the entrance to the Tünel - with its strings of fairy lights and collections of old pots and bottles, this is surely one of the most picturesque places to eat in all of İstanbul. (Note that the Tünel, the 19th-century funicular that links the southern end of İstiklal Caddesi to Karaköy, is currently closed for renovation.)
Of course the very best places are not at street level at all but up high in the grand old apartment blocks where they offer spectacular views over the Marmara. Currently the most see-and-be-seen of them is 360, on the sixth floor of the lovely Misr Apartmanı block. Alternatively, there is Leb-i Derya, on the top floor of the Richmond Hotel. Don't venture into either place unless you're dressed to kill and carrying a wallet to match.
For something more historic tourists tend to converge on the Çicek Pasajı, a lovely covered courtyard which was built in 1876 and took its name from the White Russian women who used to sell flowers here after the Revolution of 1917. What’s on offer here is table after table of people tucking into plates of meze and grilled fish washed down with copious quantities of rakı. It’s fun but very touristy. For something more authentic it’s better to pop behind the pasaj and brave Nevizade Sokak, a seething, heaving mass of eaters and drinkers on any night of the week.

10pm

By now the action is shifting away from İstiklal itself and into the side streets adjoining it where a rich mix of bars and clubs pump out live music until the early hours. Depending on the day, the week and the month the best places switch from one favourite to another. However, you're bound to find something to suit your tastes if you follow the sounds emanating from Iman Adnan or Mis Sokaks at the Taksim end of the street. Midway along ‹stiklal there's more action happening in Solakzade Sokak. Further down towards Tünel Saka Salım Çıkmazı can also get pretty lively. One regularly reliable venue is Beyoğlu Hayal Kahvesi in Büyükparmakkapı Sokak which offers a wide range of live music nightly.
Not up for clubbing? Well, this is also the time when the cinemas pull in their last punters. It's easy to run away with the idea that they must be a part of İstiklal's recent modernisation, but in fact this was always the heart of what was called Yeşilçam cinema, a type of Turkish film-making named after the street where the film-makers had their base and that flourished in the 1960s and ’70 before Hollywood made mincemeat of local rivals. To get a taste of what was on offer pop into the Yeşilcam Café in the Emek Pasajı at No 56. Here the stairs up to a smoky little café are lined with photographs of moody-looking Turkish matinee idols, as well as reproductions of posters for films with titles like Sevgili Öğretmenin (My Beloved Teacher) and Sokak Kızı (Street Girl). If you'd like to watch a film in one of the few surviving old-fashioned cinemas, try popping into Emek to the rear. The busiest of all İstiklal's cinemas, Fitaş, is currently closed for a refit. When it reopens it will be part of a complex with - you won't be surprised to learn - branches of Burger King, KFC and Wagamama.

Midnight

As the day draws to a close, so an army of refuse collectors and street sweepers descend on İstiklal. Police cars sweep up and down, hopefully looking for trouble-makers (there are none). A few sad buskers are still strumming on their instruments but they're doing little business compared to the vendors of hot chestnuts, stuffed mussels and candy-floss who have set up their stalls wherever clubbers can be expected to emerge. Two clowns in stripy wigs and polka-dot costumes stroll along with the last of the promenaders, and no one pays them the slightest attention. 
In Taksim Square the last late shoppers are heading for the Metro and fasıl music is ringing out from the Ramazan festivities in the adjoining park. Outside the Marmara Hotel Rin Tin Tin, the luckiest street dog alive, is just settling down in what has been her pitch outside the luxury hotel for the last decade. She's doing better, I think, than the poor man bedding down for the night on the cold metal seat beside the tramway. But that says it all for İstiklal, a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the absolutely downright awful.