"Please tell people that Turkey is still a safe place to come, " said Yakup Sari, office manager at Istanbul's other great landmark, the Blue Mosque.

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It was still the largest building in the world when Ottoman Turks set about converting it into a mosque after capturing Istanbul from the Byzantines in 1453, and formed a blueprint for its famous neighbour, the Blue Mosque.

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The block-long Arasta Bazaar in the shadow of the Blue Mosque is also easier on the nerves and has a few particularly good shops--notably Maison du Tapis d'orient, which sells antique Central Asian tapestries (its nearby sibling, Mehmet Cetinkaya Gallery, has exquisite carpets and ceramics), and the Iznik Foundation shop, which retails reproductions of classic 15th- and 16th-century Ottoman ceramics.

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