Nişantaşı is a popular shopping quarter, full of boutiques, department stores, cafés, pubs, restaurants and night clubs.

In the middle of the 19th century, Nişantaşı was established by Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I who erected a pair of small obelisks to define the extents of the new quarter.

[3] Following the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, many Turks from Macedonia, especially Thessaloniki (Selânik, which was an Ottoman metropolis until 1912) settled in the Nişantaşı quarter of Istanbul, including the family of the famous Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet.

[citation needed] On Vali Konağı Avenue stands the house of Turkish architect Vedat Tek, designed and built by himself in 1913–14.

Two target (aiming) stones (nişan taşı) for archery, dating back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, stand inside the mosque's courtyard.

In 1979, Abdi İpekçi, the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Milliyet (which was back then owned by the Karacan family and reflected Kemalist, secularist and centre-left views), was shot and killed near Teşvikiye Mosque by Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who went on to shoot at Pope John Paul II in 1981.

The Park Hyatt Hotel is housed in the Maçka Palas building which started life as an apartment block designed by Giulio Mongeri in 1922.

In different periods, it was inhabited by the third Turkish president Celâl Bayar, the poet and politician Abdülhak Hamid Tarhan and Turgay Şeren, a goalkeeper for the Galatasaray football team.