Steep narrow streets of brightly painted wood and stone houses run down to the Golden Horn, past a synagogue and churches that still stand.
What Balat looks like
Streets climb from the Golden Horn in tight switchbacks. Two and three storey houses in wood and stone line them. Their fronts are painted in pink, teal, mustard and ochre. Satellite dishes crowd the upper floors, and ironwork balconies project over narrow pavements strung with laundry lines. is one of the steepest of these rows, a line of bay windowed houses in close colour blocks climbing toward the ridge.
The , built in the fifteenth century for a congregation from Ohrid, holds a carved wooden bema shaped like the prow of a ship. A few streets along the shore stands the , known as the Iron Church. It is built entirely from prefabricated iron shipped down the Danube from Vienna. It reopened after restoration in 2018. stands further up the same shore road, designed by Gabriel Tedeşci and dating from 1899.
Toward Fener to the south, the red brick towers of the rise above the rooftops, built in the nineteenth century and still a working school. The shopfronts on the lower streets nearby keep the same two and three storey scale as the houses above them, with hand painted signs and roller shutters at pavement level.
Shot in Balat
Taken 2 sent Kim's car along the narrow streets of Balat and Fener, past washing lines and garbage cans. The red brick towers of the Phanar Greek Orthodox College are glimpsed over the rooftops during the chase. A few streets north on Esnaf Loncası Sokağı, the coffeehouse that played the Koçovalı family's café in the series Çukur burned down in 2022 and has not reopened. The series Cennet Mahallesi used Çorbacı Çeşmesi Sokağı, the lane behind the college, for its own street scenes over its run on Show TV from 2004 to 2007.
Taken 2, 2012
Phanar Greek Orthodox College
The chase sequence in which Kim drives across the narrow streets of Balat and Fener passes in sight of this red brick school, its towers a fixed landmark over the rooftops. The building is in continuous use as a school and was not dressed for the production.
Alfama's narrow lanes drop toward the water of the Tagus in the same steep pattern as Balat's streets down to the Golden Horn, with laundry strung between balconies and small cafés at the bends. The buildings run to ochre and faded red rather than Balat's full range of colour, and tiled facades appear on many fronts. Keep the tile work out of close shots or dress over it for an Istanbul standin. Try searching narrow lanes to the water now.
Cerro Concepción climbs a steep hillside in narrow stepped streets. Its houses are painted in bright pinks, blues and yellows, packed close along the slope much like Balat's own colour and pitch. Corrugated metal siding and funicular cars give the hill a different texture from Balat's wood, stone and tile. Keep funiculars and their cable lines out of frame if the period calls for Istanbul rather than Chile. Try searching bright steep hillside streets now.
Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre, Italy
Riomaggiore stacks pastel houses up a steep ravine above the sea, the same hillside massing and bright paint as Balat's rows above the Golden Horn. The houses face open water rather than an enclosed inlet, and their shutters and tile roofs look Italian rather than Ottoman up close. Hold wide shots to the upper streets, where the open sea stays out of frame. Try searching pastel houses on a hillside now.
