Beylerbeyi Palace

Palace · ÜsküdarIstanbul,Türkiye

A white marble summer palace on the Bosphorus's Asian shore, its halls built round an indoor fountain, its terraced gardens ending at the sea wall.

Beylerbeyi Palace is a white marble summer palace on the Asian shore, built at a compact scale. You enter a reception hall built around an indoor pool and fountain, and the sound of water follows you from room to room. Bohemian crystal weighs down the chandeliers, and painted ships sail across the ceilings. Terraced gardens climb the hillside behind, past a magnolia grove to garden pavilions, and two small marble kiosks stand right on the sea wall, facing the current. Sultan Abdülaziz raised it in the 1860s as a summer retreat and a guesthouse for visiting royalty, never as a full-time home. His architect Sarkis Balyan worked at a step down in size from the vast Dolmabahçe downstream. The painted ships nod to the sultan's passion for his navy. A darker thread runs through the house: Abdülhamid II, the last sultan to wield real power, spent his final years here under guard. The first Bosphorus bridge now passes just beyond the gardens.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It was built to be seen from the water — the facade addresses the strait, not the street; from a passing boat the white palace and the bridge line up in a single frame.
The sea kiosks face the water, not the road — the two marble pavilions at the ends of the quay frame the strait and its passing tankers, and most visitors miss them by turning uphill first.
Check the edges of the carpets — beneath the silk, woven at the sultans' own mills in Hereke, lies reed matting shipped from Egypt: the palace's defence against Bosphorus damp and summer heat.

Things to do

1
Stand in the room with an indoor pool
Step into the central reception hall, where a marble pool and fountain sit indoors rather than in a garden. Stand still and listen to how the running water softens the whole room, then drift from doorway to doorway with your head tilted back, counting the ships painted across the ceilings.
2
Climb the terraces to the garden pavilions
Groups cluster in the state rooms, so the terraces behind the palace stay near-empty. Climb them past the magnolia grove to the pool terrace and its garden pavilions, then turn and look back over the roof at the strait. The first Bosphorus bridge crosses just beyond the garden, and the tankers and ferries pass underneath it all day.
3
Find where the grandeur thins
Move slowly through the smaller upstairs quarters and notice where the gilding gives way to plain paint and simpler timber. Stop at a sea-facing window there. For the palace's last resident, shut in and not allowed out, this stretch of water was most of what he saw of the world.