Bergama Arastası

About Bergama Arastası

The Bergama Arasta is the Ottoman market quarter of Bergama, which began to take shape in the 14th and 15th centuries and has housed many different crafts over the centuries. Bergama Municipality explains that it grew from the coming together of separate guilds of boot makers, shoemakers, drapers, saddlers and grain merchants, whose small shops stand side by side facing squares shaded by plane trees. Inns and a bedesten were added in different periods to make trade easier. Most of the surviving buildings date from the 19th century, because a great fire in 1853 destroyed older fabric, and the municipality repaired the shop fronts in 2007 and 2008. Inside the Arasta is the covered market, Kapali Carsi, which Visit Izmir says was first repaired by the municipality in 1930, served for a time from 1980 as a meat and vegetable market and today holds shops selling electronic goods for visitors. It has a round relief clock in its central section, trading buildings built between 1930 and 1940 on its east and west sides, and was restored in 2010.