Dolmabahçe Palace

Dolmabahçe Palace is a large 19th-century palace in Istanbul, Turkey, right on the European shore of the Bosphorus strait. It was ordered by Sultan Abdülmecid I and built between 1843 and 1853, and it served as the main administrative centre of the Ottoman Empire from 1853 to 1887 and again from 1909 to 1922.

It is the largest palace in Turkey, with about 285 rooms and 46 halls in a building of roughly 45,000 square metres. Its white front is a blend of Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical styles. The name means "filled-in garden", because the site was once a bay that was gradually filled in and turned into a royal garden.

Why was it built?

Earlier sultans lived in the medieval Topkapı Palace, which felt old-fashioned and less comfortable than the palaces of European kings. Abdülmecid I wanted a modern home beside the water. The architects were Garabet Balyan, his son Nigoğayos Balyan and Evanis Kalfa, members of an Armenian family of Ottoman court architects.

The palace was extremely expensive. Its cost was a large part of a year's tax income and, together with foreign loans, put heavy pressure on the empire's finances.

After the sultans

Six sultans lived here until the caliphate was abolished in 1924, and then the palace passed to the new Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, its founder and first president, used it as a summer residence and died here on 10 November 1938. Today the palace is run by the Directorate of National Palaces and is open to visitors, who can see its grand ceremonial hall under a dome about 36 metres high.

On the globe

The model shows the long white palace on the Bosphorus shore with its central domed ceremonial hall.