Ottoman literary texts reflect the transformation of Istanbul after 1453, when Istanbul became the subject of prose (tezkires) and three poetry genres (histories in verse, encomia to the city, and poems such as eulogies, gazels, musammats, kıt'as and mesnevis). While the corpus of Ottoman texts relating to Istanbul includes mundane depictions of the city, including overviews of its social structure, streets and people, the literary tradition concentrates also on landmarks old and new, which functioned as fixed coordinates. Indeed, some texts recount the myths and fables that were associated with various monuments, thus mapping those structures within the city. During the Kanuni era all literary genres proliferated most of them generated within Istanbul, with some relating directly to the city, such as Latifi’s Letâif-iEvsaf-ıIstanbul, which was the first book on the metropolis. This paper shows the influence of the Sultan Kanuni's imperial image, and of the reconstruction of Istanbul, on an ever-greater number of literary works that reflected the vital interactions between the city and its courts. It demonstrates the creation of literary spaces for new genres, and the attempts on the part of the literature to re-invest the city with 'imperial' significance and meaning. Giving detailed and sustained analysis of the spatial content in narratives across the range of works of the period, it relates that to optical concepts, making use of recent theory on the 'production of space'.