<ul fr-original-style="padding-inline-start: 20px;" style="padding-inline-start: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; list-style-position: inside; box-sizing: border-box;"><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Italo is my name and my nickname too.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Currently, I’m working as a photographer and journalist, if I wasn’t doing that I could have been a footballer.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to my friends, I’m a master of&nbsp;tomato sauce, Bolognese sauce, and any sauce.&nbsp;</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I live in Istanbul but I’m from Bologna in my heart because although I don’t live there I visit frequently.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">If not at home, you can find me at the seaside.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">When I come across&nbsp;a good pizzeria in a neighborhood, I feel I belong there.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">After living decades in Istanbul, I have discovered that also here, in Beyoğlu Balık Pazarı,&nbsp;I can find a delicious bottarga with which I prepare one of my best spaghetti recipes. </li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I have recently found inspiration in making bread.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I complain the most about referees in Italian football.&nbsp;</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I can never find&nbsp;fresh green celery in Istanbul (or, at least, rarely).</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I do not return from the market without good tomatoes (if it is the right season) and beyaz peynir.&nbsp;</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">When I need to fix my camera, I go to&nbsp;Sirkeci.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Only a real Istanbulite photographer would know that owning a tear gas mask is a good idea.</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">My favorite market to take photos in Istanbul is probably Samatya Pazarı, but I love all of them.</li></ul>

Early morning. The most crucial time of the day. Tarpaulins, heavy iron sticks and the ropes that bind them are the tools needed to construct the roof of one of the oldest gathering places in human history in the narrow streets of the neighborhood, which are occupied with different purposes for the remaining six days of the week. These are the fixed elements of this nomadic structure. Then there is the labor, bargaining, land, crops and realities that fill it. The physical space it occupies, one or several streets of the neighborhood and the height up to the tarpaulins. And it will take some time to calculate the area it occupies in the city. For sure.&nbsp;The distance from the clean Black Sea coast to Tarlabaşı and the space covered by the plastic crates of&nbsp;ispit transported along this distance; the weight of Larissa's cookie recipes, who knows how old the recipe is, which she carried from Ukraine to Kurdela Street; and the length of the list of products she put on sale that day, written in Cyrillic; the distance that the anchovies, horse mackerel and chinook that fisherman Murat put on the counter traveled on time at sea and then on land despite all the hunters; the weight of Ezine cheese that Ömer brought from Çanakkale and the time it took until the best Ezine recipe was found; the waiting time for a mixed gözleme with spinach, cheese and potatoes; the number of walnuts cracked to be tasted by the customers; all the similarities between two neighboring neighborhoods and the centuries it took for them to accept each other.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2023/0/2/1674571239324.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.51" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable"><h4 fr-original-style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">Permanent and temporary in Kasımpaşa İnebolu Pazarı</h4><hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">Can all this give a measure of the area covered by a neighborhood market, pazar? Can the temporary market, where the village and the city, the seller and the buyer, the buying and the giving, the exchange of economic, social and cultural layers take place, be the most concrete resister or supporter of a neighborhood's gentrification movement? If we were to redefine the marketplace today, would it be enough to call it the place where we meet all together in between realities of the neighborhood?&nbsp;Yes. At least today. The acrid and sour smell of olive oil, the taste of bitter black tea, the pink of plastic bags the color of ispit root; the waves of inward, outward and inward migration of the 1960s and 2010s, the transition from 19th-century housing to gentrified 21st-century residences is the memory of walking along Dolapdere in and between Kasımpaşa İnebolu and Tarlabaşı markets. Last Sunday we met Italo (Rondinella) and Kornelia (Binicewicz) in Kasımpaşa İnebolu Pazarı, on Turşucu Bayram Street. Chestnut mushrooms and baby spinach in a pink plastic bag. We ordered four ince belli&nbsp;cups of tea. Then we headed towards Tarlabaşı.&nbsp;Tag along,Elif

Route: Pazar-hopping in Istanbul. Locals: Kornelia Binicewicz and Italo Rondinella.

🚏 ROUTE: PAZAR-HOPPING IN ISTANBUL

A weekly journal of neighbourhoods to dig into urban culture, people stories, and sociocultural dynamics. In every issue, we meet an inhabitant in their hood where they live, create or belong.

ITALO RONDINELLA

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🚏 ROUTE: PAZAR-HOPPING IN ISTANBUL