İstiklal Avenue is flanked by late Ottoman era buildings (mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries) in a variety of styles including Neo-Classical, Neo-Gothic, Renaissance Revival, Beaux-Arts, Art Nouveau and First Turkish National Architecture.

There are also a few Art Deco style buildings from the early years of the Turkish Republic, and a number of more recent examples of modern architecture.

They include the Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage) which is full of lively restaurants and taverns; the Balık Pazarı (The Fish Market) with the Armenian church of Üç Horan to one side; the Hüseyin Ağa Mosque; the Roman Catholic churches of Santa Maria Draperis and S. Antonio di Padova; the Greek Orthodox church of Hagia Triada; several academic institutions established by Austria, France, Germany and Italy in the 19th century; and the consulates (embassies until 1923 when these moved to the new capital of Ankara) of France, Greece, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Sweden (the consulate of the United Kingdom is just off Istiklal Avenue on Meşrutiyet Street).

At the southern end of the avenue, it is possible to board the Tünel (the Tunnel), the world's second-oldest subway, which entered service in 1875 and carries passengers down to Karaköy.

When 19th-century travelers referred to Constantinople (today Istanbul) as the Paris of the East, they were usually thinking of the Grande Rue de Péra and its cosmopolitan, half-European, half-Asian culture.

[citation needed] The avenue briefly fell from grace in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the old Istanbulite inhabitants started moving elsewhere, and the side streets (then infamous for bars and night clubs with live music and shows, called pavyon in Turkish) were repopulated by low-income migrants from rural Anatolia.