Gülhane Park

Park · GülhaneIstanbul,Türkiye

The Istanbul sultans' private garden, closed to the city for centuries and opened in 1912, running downhill under plane trees to where two waters meet.

Gülhane Park runs downhill under tall plane trees from the walls of Topkapı Palace to the point where the Golden Horn meets the Bosphorus. You walk shaded gravel paths, hear parakeets screech in the canopy, and come out on a terrace looking across the water to the Asian shore. In spring the flower beds turn into long ribbons of tulips. Families picnic on the grass, students read on the benches, and ferries slide past below the railing. This was the sultans' private outer garden for centuries, closed to everyone outside the palace, and it opened to the city in 1912 as one of Istanbul's first public parks. The Byzantine sea wall still runs along its lower edge, the same line that once closed the city off from the Marmara. A weathered Roman column stands among the trees near that end, its Latin still legible on the base. The park is busiest on spring weekends, when the tulip beds draw half of Istanbul with a camera.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The seaward end is the payoff — from the upper gate the park looks like an ordinary tree-lined slope and many turn back; the reason to come is the terrace above the water.
Climb it, don't descend it — entering from the lower Sirkeci side lets you walk uphill toward the palace, against the downhill flow pouring in from the Sultanahmet side.
Listen for the parakeets — flocks of bright green rose-ringed parakeets, thought to descend from escaped cage birds, nest in the old plane trees and give the canopy a tropical screech.
The walk ends at a tea garden — Set Üstü sits on the old sea wall at the bottom of the park, its tables out over the shipping lane and the Asian shore.
There is a museum in the old stables — the palace's Has Ahırlar, up against the wall inside the park, now holds working replicas of instruments from a thousand years of Islamic science.

Things to do

1
Walk the slope to the three-waters terrace
Start at the upper gate beside the palace wall and walk the full descent under the plane trees. Keep going until the canopy opens onto the terrace above Sarayburnu. Stand at the railing where the Golden Horn, Bosphorus and Sea of Marmara meet, and watch the ferries thread between the European and Asian shores.
2
Hunt the tulips in early spring
Come in early-to-mid April and follow the long beds down the main avenue. Look first for solid ribbons of a single colour, then the blended rows further along. Shoot them low, with the arching plane-tree canopy and the old palace wall rising behind the blooms.
3
Track down the Column of the Goths
Leave the central path near the lower, seaward end and look for a lone weathered column on a stepped base. Walk round to the side that carries the Latin: FORTUNAE REDUCI OB DEVICTOS GOTHOS — thanks to Fortune for a victory over the Goths. Read the base first, then step back far enough to take in all nineteen metres of it.