“Green Village”
Old name: Hagios Stephanos, San Stefano
Market: Wednesday (Yeşilköy Halkali Caddesi, Bakırköy)
Yeşilköy is the Kuzguncuk of European İstanbul, a pretty cohesive place with a villagey feel right to it on the Sea of Marmara in the city’s western outskirts. It has lots of lovely old wooden houses and a cluster of churches mostly named after St Stephen, the patron saint of the area. More importantly it has a wide range of cafes, restaurants and bars and an inviting stretch of sand beside its fishing harbour.
According to some sources, Yeşilköy was chosen as the new name for San Stefano in 1926 by novelist Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil (1866-1945), a nature-lover and local resident.
Backstory
Yeşilköy started life as the Byzantine settlement of Hagios Stephanos, a name given to it after a storm caused the bones of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, to make a temporary stop here en route from Constantinople to Rome. 
But it’s a suburb haunted by an absence. Once upon a time this was the site of a huge Russian Orthodox church built by the Russians between 1895 and 1989 to mark the furthest point that they reached during the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-78 (AKA the ’93 War). Designed by the Russian architect Bozarov, the church served as a mausoleum for 5,000 Russian soldiers, but when the Russians declared war on the Ottomans at the start of the First World War it was speedily dynamited, an event that featured in Turkey’s first motion picture The Destruction of the Russian Monument in San Stefano produced by Fuat Uzkınay in 1914.
The site in Kalatarya (Şenlikköy) is now occupied by the army.
Around Yeşilköy
Most people will head straight for the water which is where the nicest restaurants – and views – are. It’s here, too, that you’ll find assorted 19th-century churches, all of them named after St Stephen. The most conspicuous is the Roman Catholic church with an altarpiece depicting the saint’s death by stoning in Jerusalem in 34 or 35. The Armenian church of Surp Stepanos is in İnci Çiçeği Sokak, the Greek Orthodox church in Mirasyedi Sokak.
In 2023 the new (and large) Mor Ephrem Syrian Orthodox church opened here as the first Orthodox church to be built from scratch in Turkey since 1923. It’s inland from the other churches and not usually open to visitors except perhaps on Sundays.
Otherwise the most enjoyable thing to do here is just wonder the streets admiring the old houses and pausing every now and then for refreshment at one of the copious coffee houses.
Eating
Opposite the Catholic Church is a small fish restaurant called Eleos which is as close as Turkey gets to a Greek taverna with lots of fresh fish just waiting to be washed down with wine. Tel: 0212-663 3911
Transport info
Marmaray trains run from from Sirkeci to Yeşilköy.
Nearby areas
What the lost Russian memorial church looked liked before it was blown up
