One very important aspect of city life was promenading, the strolling around in the gardens and open spaces both within and just outside the city, being seen and viewing others, enjoying the flowers, feasting, boating and generally relaxing in the fresh air. On specific occasions – the nights of the month of Ramazan and the two religious festivals of Ramazan bayramı and kurban bayramı – people poured onto the streets in a carnival of enjoyment, decked out in their best finery, as they promenaded through the hectic and illuminated streets where the shops and coffee houses stayed open until dawn, their fronts festooned with laurel and lanterns, and were entertained by amusements from puppet plays to dancing. In Ramazan, minarets were illuminated, lanterns strung between them forming different patterns, such as crescent moons in blazing lights, until they seemed as if covered from top to bottom in a shirt of fire. The lighting of these lanterns announced the beginning of the festival. This was in contrast to the rest of the year when, according to Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza Efendi, referring to the late nineteenth century, ‘there was no night life as there was in European cities’, and ‘after the evening call to prayer everybody was plunged into the repose of sleep in their houses’.

One of the great attractions of these festivities, both for the populace, who enjoyed them immensely, and for the janissaries, who made money out of them, was the bayram swings, which, to Selaniki's disgust, resembled those at infidel fairs.