Balkapanı Han

The Balkapanı Han features a long, vaulted subterranean cellar built from heavy stone that once served as the honey depot for the Ottoman Empire. Merchants brought jars of honey from across the provinces to be taxed and distributed here near the Golden Horn docks. In the seventeenth century, the explorer Evliya Çelebi noted the sheer volume of goods flowing through these chambers. Today, the structure remains a rugged, shadowed maze of thick masonry buried beneath the modern, crowded streets of Tahtakale.