Taking a guided tour of the extravagant Dolmabahçe Palace (Dolmabahçe Sarayı) in the modern part of Istanbul will undoubtedly leave a big impression. Below you find a video of the guided Selamlık tour.

There are two versions available: a YouTube version (smaller in size) and a WVM version (bigger in size). The length of both movies is the same: 3:57 min.

Enjoy!

YouTube Version

Local Version

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In order to visit the Dolmabahçe Palace (Dolmabahçe Sarayı) you must take one or both of the guided tours. The Selamlık tour takes you through the quarters reserved for men, while the Harem tour shows you the apartments of the sultan’s family.
Only a limited amount of people are allowed into each section per day, so make sure to check out the opening hours. If you only want to go on one tour, visit the Selamlık.

The entrance of the palace is located close to the clock tower, which was only added in 1895. You’ll find the ticket sales booth a bit further at the left. If you have some time to spare, you may want to wait for the change of the guard, which takes place every hour in summertime.

Once you entered the complex, enjoy the well-maintained gardens surrounding the palace as well as the magnificent Bosphorus views. Just before entering the palace itself, please note the working flower clock and beautiful Imperial Gate at the left. Once used by the sultan and his ministers, it’s every Tuesday afternoon the stage for a performance of the Mehter or Janissary Band.

Just outside the palace, a small sign will tell you when the next tour starts, Selamlık or Harem and whether it’s in Turkish or English. Normally these guided tours start every 25 minutes, but in busy periods they may raise the frequency. The tour itself progresses through the palace at a pretty high pace. Make sure you stay close to the guide if you want to hear what he or she has to say.

Selamlık Tour

The tour starts in the main entrance (medhal) hall where you’ll get some general instructions. Please notice the English chandelier with its sixty arms and the two large Turkish porcelain vases. The guide will then lead you through the secretariat’s room, the entrance hall and the exhibit hall, with all various precious gold, silver, porcelain and crystal items on display. But it’s after passing the palace’s mosque (mescit) and the resting room that things really start to get interesting.

You take the staircase, referred to as the crystal staircase because of its balustrade in Baccarat crystal, to the palace’s second floor. Prepare for an eye-popping experience when you enter the ambassador (süfera) hall, undoubtedly one of the most important rooms in the palace which used to host formal receptions and meetings. I still don’t know what was more impressive: the 88 square meter Iranian Tebriz carpet, the pair of bearskins (one a gift from the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, the other ordered to preserve symmetry), the silver clock from Egypt providing the correct time, date, air pressure and temperature, or the 2000 kg chandelier with matching crystal three meter high mirrors.

Impressed? Do try to keep up while the tour continues, because you ain’t seen nothing yet. You run out of superlatives while passing rooms like the privy chamber, offering some of the most beautiful parquet in the entire palace. Or the study room with its Steinway piano dating back to 1911. Not to mention the magnificent hamam and all the portraits and paintings you see along the way. (see the Dolmabahçe Palace video)

But all this is a mere prelude to the grand finale: the muyade hall. It covers approximately 2.000 square meters, is 36 meters high and has a dome with a diameter of 25 meters. The Hereke carpet on the floor is 124 m². But the masterpiece is without a doubt the English chandelier, built in 1853, holding 664 bulbs and weighing 4,5 tons. According to the guide, it’s still the world’s largest chandelier. (see picture gallery of Dolmabahçe Palace)

The room, capable of holding 2500 guests, was used to host all state ceremonies and receptions. It was also in this room that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk first spoke to the people of Istanbul as the President of the Turkish Republic. Following his death on November 10, 1938, Atatürk’s body was placed in a casket and remained in this room from 16 to 18 November. The room was opened for the public to express their condolences.

Harem Tour

Although it doesn’t have the same wow-factor as the Selamlık, the Harem is still worth touring. The apartments of the sultan and his family are, compared to the rest of the rooms in the Dolmabahçe Palace, less spacious.

The Harem consists of a series of salons, galleries and hamams and a post-circumcision resting hall. Especially noteworthy are the suite of the Valide Sultan (the sultan’s mother), the blue and pink salons, the bedroom of Sultan Abdül Aziz with the custom made bed to carry the 150 kg amateur wrestler, as well as the study and bedroom used by Atatürk.

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Dolmabahçe Palace (Dolmabahçe Sarayı), Turkey’s largest mono-block palace, was commissioned by Sultan Abdül Mecit in 1843.
Built to belie the military and financial decline of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul’s first European-style palace was an opulent one, excessive in size and filled with gold and crystal.

Dolmabahçe Palace (Dolmabahçe Sarayı)
Location
Dolmabahçe Caddesi, Beşiktaş (opposite the İnönü (Beşiktaş) football stadium).
Tel: +90 212 236 90 00
on Map with Tourist Attractions in the Modern Part of Istanbul
Open
Daily between 09.00 and 16.00. Closed on Monday, Thursday and January 1st. On the first day of religious holidays, the museum is closed all day.
Ticket Sales
Selamlık: TL 15, Harem: TL 10, Combined ticket: TL 20.
An extra TL 6 is charged if you want to use your photo-camera, TL 15 for a film or video camera. Credit cards are accepted.
Please note: daily only 1500 people are allowed inside each section!

Dolmabahçe Means Filled Garden

The area where the Dolmabahçe Palace now stands used to be a small bay of the Bosphorus. From the 18th century onwards, the bay was gradually filled to become an imperial garden by the Bosphorus. People referred to it as Dolmabahçe, literally meaning filled (dolma) garden (bahçe).
Since the sultans loved the site a lot, plenty of mansions (köşk) and pavilions (kasır) were built on that spot during the 18th and 19th centuries. Gradually this collection grew into a complex called the Beşiktaş Waterfront Palace, demolished by order of Sultan Abdül Mecit to make way for the Dolmabahçe Palace. He decided to move from Topkapi Palace to Dolmabahçe Palace since it would be able to provide ‘modern’ luxuries that Topkapi Palace lacked.

Extravagant Palace

The true reason behind the construction of Dolmabahçe Palace was to cover up that the Ottoman Empire was in decline. Therefore, the new palace had to be lavishly decorated to impress the world. It also had to break with the Ottoman tradition of constructing a series of pavilions, so he ordered the leading Ottoman architect Garabet Baylan and his son Nigoğayos to build a mono-block Ottoman-European palace. The construction began in 1843 and was finished in 1856.

The result is a two-floor palace, covering an area of 45.000 m², containing 285 rooms, 44 halls, 68 toilets and 6 baths (hamam). The design is a mixture of Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classic and traditional Ottoman art and culture. Fourteen tons of gold were used to gild the ceilings. It also has the largest collection of Bohemian and Baccarat crystal chandeliers in the world. The price tag for all this: a staggering five million Ottoman gold coins, the current equivalent of 35 tons of gold. (See the Dolmabahçe Picture Gallery and video of Dolmabahçe Palace)

Six Sultans and Atatürk

Starting with the move of the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from Topkapi Palace in 1856, until the abolishment of the caliphate in 1924, the Dolmabahçe Palace was home to six sultans. There was however a 20-year interval from 1889 to 1909 in which the Yıldız Palace was used.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, used the palace as a presidential house in the summer and enacted some of his most important works here, e.g. the introduction of the new alphabet. Troubled by health problems, he spent his last years in the palace until he died at 09.05 on November 10, 1938. In his honor, all the clocks in the palace are stopped at that exact time. The room in which he died is part of one of the palace tours.

Click here to read about the guided tours in Dolmabahçe Palace.

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