Fatih

With only a few days left until Eid al-Fitr, people have started thronging the shops in Istanbul's Eminönü district, famous for traditional Turkish delight and Ottomon-inspired sweets, to do holiday shopping.

As preparations for Ramadan are ongoing, in Eminönü, flamboyant candies, chocolates and Turkish delights have taken their place on the counters.

Amid rising earthquake concerns in Türkiye's largest metropolis Istanbul, people have started migrating from the districts closer to fault lines to more safe locations, as many apartments sit vacant.

Landlords, who are having problems finding new tenants for those houses, which are mostly old structures, have no other solution but to reduce rents.

As Istanbul has more than 9,000 narrow streets that fire brigades or other rescue vehicles cannot even enter, this problem creates a serious concern in the city where a large-scale quake is expected.

Since the Feb. 6 earthquakes claimed lives of more than 50,000 people and caused severe destruction in the country's south, the expected quake in Istanbul has come to the agenda.

Teams from Istanbul Municipality have discovered a statue from the Roman period, estimated to be 1,900 years old, in the area of the Saint Polyeuktos Church in Saraçhane that was destroyed during the Latin occupation.

The teams from Istanbul Municipality's Cultural Heritage Department initiated an excavation work in the area where the church was destroyed on June 8 last year.

Within the scope of the restoration works of the historical Maiden's Tower, one of the symbolic buildings of Istanbul, the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry has informed that they have surrounded the island where the tower is located with stakes to keep it standing and afloat for thousands of years.

The 119-year-old Vlora Han in Istanbul's Sirkeci neighborhood, one of the oldest commercial buildings in the city, is in disrepair and its crumbling exterior attracts experts' attention.

Intense cracks and decay can also be seen in the interior of the building.

The Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion Agency (BSMEPA) and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization in Turkey (KOSGEB) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrated the conversion of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia into a mosque by reciting a poem that refers to himself as a modern reincarnation of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror who captured what was the world's largest cathedral in 1453.

Nearly 4,000 suspects have been caught in the operations carried out in 11 districts of Istanbul since the new year against suspects found to be involved in the drug trade.

Urban design practices and façade restorations carried out by the municipality in the Balat neighborhood of Istanbul's Fatih district have made neighborhoods on the shores of the Golden Horn a frequent destination for photographers.