Dolmabahçe Palace

Dolmabahçe Sarayı is the Ottoman palace that announced, very deliberately, that the empire had entered the mid-19th century. Built between 1843 and 1856 under Sultan Abdülmecid I, it replaced Topkapı Palace as the main imperial residence, and its name — “filled garden” — remembers the bay that was reclaimed here on the Bosphorus shore. You can feel the shift in style immediately in its proportions and decoration: a ceremonial palace of more than 250 rooms, dressed in European-influenced grandeur but still rooted in Ottoman court life. The design is usually linked to the Balyan family, the Armenian-Ottoman architects who shaped much of the city’s royal architecture in this period. This was also the stage for a final, very modern chapter in Turkish history. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk spent his last days here in 1938, and the palace later became a museum and state residence. …

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