Today, as we always do, we suggest you have a tea or coffee in our coffee shop while reading about Topkapi Palace, home of the Grand Sultans. You may then take a short morning or early afternoon walk for only 250 meters to reach that magnificient Palace. Please bear in mind that those Grand Sultans did not have the comfort of the bed in your room :)
Topkapı Sarayı the Great Palace of the Osmanlı Sultans, is the most extensive and fascinating monument of Ottoman civil architecture in exictence. In addition to its architectural and historical interest, it contains, as a museum, superb and unrivalled collections of porcelains, armour, fabrics, jewels, illuminated manuscripts, calligraphy, and many objects of art formerly belonging to the sultans. A cursory visit requires several hours; to know it thoroughly many weeks would hardly suffice.
When Mehmet the Conqueror, known to the Turks as Fatih Sultan Mehmet, captured Constantinople in 1453, he found the former palaces of the Byzantine Emperors in such ruins as to be uninhabitable. He therefore selected a large overgrown area on the Third Hill as the site of his palace, the district where now stand the central buildings of the University of Istanbul and the great complex of the Suleymaniye. Here he erected an extensive palace which later came to be known as Eski Saray, or the Old Palace. For only a few years later, in 1459 , he decided to build a new palace at the northern end of the First Hill; the area once occupied by the ancient acropolis of Byzantium. To do so he cut off the point of the Constantinopolitan triangle by building a masive defence-wall, guarded by towers, which extended from the Byzantine sea-walls along the Golden Horn to those along the Marmara. (The Palace eventually took its name from the main sea-gate in these defence-walls; this was Topkapı, the Cannon Gate, so-called because it bristled with armaments. This twin-towered gateway formerly stood at Saray Point, but it was destroyed in the nineteenth century.) The area thus enclosed must be approximately identical with the ancient city of Byzantium before its successive enlargements, Fatih Mehmet constructed his palace on the high ground, or acropolis; on the slopes of the hill and along the seashore he laid out extensive parks and gardens. He could not have chosen a more magnificent site in the city. As Evliya Çelebi remarked of it more than three centuries ago:"Never hath a more delightful residence been erected by the art of man"
Of the Palace as we know it today, almost the entire plan, with the exception of the Harem and the so-called Fourth Court, was laid out and built by Fatih between 1459 and 1465. The Harem in its present state belongs largely to the time of Murat III (r.1574-95) with extensive reconstructions and additions chiefly under Mehmet IV (r.1648-87) and Osman III (r.1754-7); while the isolated pavillions of the Fourth Court date from various periods. On there occasions, in 1574, 1665 and 1856, very serious fires devastated large sections of the Palace, so that while the three main courts have preserved essentially the arrengement given them by Fatih, many of the buildings have either disappeared (as most of those in the First Court) or been reconstructed and redecorated in later periods.
The Palace of Topkapı must not be thought of merely as the private residence of the Sultan and his court, for it was much more than that. It was the seat of the supreme excutive and judicial council of the Empire, the Divan, and it housed the largest and most select of the training schools for the imperial civil service the Palace School. The verious divisions of the Saray correspond pretty clearly with these various functions. The first court , which was open to the public, was the service area for the palace. It contained a hospital, a bakery, an arsenal the mint and outer treasury, and a large number of storage places and dormitories for guards and domestics of the Outer Service, those whose duties did not ordinarily bring them into private, residential areas of the Palace. The Second Court was the seat of the Divan, devoted to the public administration of the Empire; İt could be entered by anyone who had business to transact with the Council. Beyond this court to right and left were certain other service areas: the kitchens and privy stables. The Third Court, strictly reserved for officials of the Court and Government, was largely given over to various divisions of the Palace School, but also contained some of the chambers of the selamlık, or reception rooms of the Sultan, The Harem, specifically the women's quarter of the Palace, had additional rooms of the selamlık, men's quarter of the palace, and the Sultan's private apartments, as well as quarters for the Black Eunuchs. The Fourth Court was a large enclosed garden on various levels with occasional pleasure domes. The total number of people permanently resident in the Saray was between 4.000 and 5.000.
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