Beylerbeyi Palace

On the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, its long white façade rising straight from the water, Beylerbeyi Palace was built as a place for the Ottoman sultans to escape the summer heat and to impress the most important guests of their empire. Sultan Abdülaziz commissioned it in the early 1860s, and it was completed in 1865 on a site where his father, Mahmud II, had earlier kept a wooden palace that was lost to fire. Compared with the sprawling Dolmabahçe across the strait, Beylerbeyi is smaller and more restrained, but its setting, with terraced gardens climbing the hill behind it, makes it one of the most graceful buildings on the Bosphorus.

The palace was designed by the Armenian-Ottoman architects Sarkis and Agop Balyan, members of the family that shaped much of nineteenth-century imperial Istanbul. Outside it speaks the language of French Second Empire and Baroque Revival architecture; inside, the plan follows the old Ottoman division into a selamlık for official life and a harem for the family. The main building has three storeys, counting the basement, with 24 rooms and six halls. Egyptian reed mats cover the floors, Hereke carpets and Baccarat crystal chandeliers fill the rooms, and clocks made at the Golden Horn dockyard stand alongside porcelain from Europe and Asia. On the waterfront, two small marine pavilions with octagonal roofs mark the edges of the two quarters, while the gardens hide a marble kiosk built by Mahmud II as a hunting lodge, a yellow kiosk and stables.

From the start, Beylerbeyi served as the empire's grandest guest house. Empress Eugénie of France stayed here in 1869 on her way to the opening of the Suez Canal and is said to have admired the windows so much that she had one copied for her rooms in Paris. Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, King Nicholas of Montenegro and the German emperor Wilhelm II were also guests. The palace's last royal resident was a captive: after he was deposed, Sultan Abdülhamid II spent the final six years of his life here and died in the palace in 1918. Üsküdar, the district around it, is one of the oldest quarters of Istanbul, a city that has straddled Europe and Asia on the shores of this strait for millennia.

Getting there

The palace stands in the Beylerbeyi neighbourhood on the Asian side of Istanbul, next to the Asian end of the first Bosphorus bridge and about 3 km north of central Üsküdar, which is linked to the European shore by ferries and the Marmaray rail tunnel. Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW) is about 28 km to the south-east; Istanbul Airport (IST) serves the city from the European side.