During the daytime the area is packed with merchants and their customers, hordes of shoppers and many tourists. Add to this a number of key government buildings including the governor’s office and the main campus of Istanbul University in Beyazit. At night it is very, very quiet. There is some housing in Eminönü but most of the buildings are offices, shops and workshops, and if you do happen to be there in the evening the contrast with the daytime is eery and somewhat menacing. In the daytime there are 2,000,000 people in Eminönü, but the district has only 30,000 residents. The people that do live in Eminönü are working class and conservative.

The area is heaving with shoppers especially at weekends people come from all over the city, looking for discount clothing, or plastic accessories, staionery and cheap toys in the streets behind the Spice Bazaar. You will not find the classy boutiques of the big shopping centres, the clientele in Eminönü is much more traditional and working class. The narrow climbing street called Mahmutpaşa for example is the place where those of a conservative nature come to buy a coat or a headscarf, or to kit their boys out in the costume they wear on circumcision day.