Dolmabahce Palace

The Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, located at the European side of the Bosporus, served as the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1853 to 1922, apart from a twenty-year interval (1889-1909) in which the Sisli Palace was used.
 

History

The Dolmabahçe Palace was built between the years 1843 and 1856 under the order of the Empire's 31st sultan, Sultan Abdülmecid , at a cost of five million Ottoman gold pounds, the equivalent of 35 tons of gold. Fourteen tons of gold in the form of gold leaf were used to gild the ceilings of the palace. Haci Said Aga was responsible for the building works while the project was realised by Garabet Balyan, his son Nigoğayos Balyan and Evanis Kalfa. The design is basically western in style, with elements of Baroque, Rococo and Neo-Classic traditions blended with Ottoman traditional art and culture to form a new approach. Functionally, on the other hand, it is appropriate to the traditional Ottoman palace life and also to the Turkish House features. It is the biggest palace in Turkey considering that the area monoblock building occupies 15000 sqm. The Dolmabahçe Palace was home to six sultans from 1856, when it was first inhabited, up until the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924: The last royal to live here was Caliph Abdülmecid Efendi. A law that went into effect on March 3, 1924 transferred ownership of the palace to the national heritage of the new Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding leader of this modern republic, used the palace as a presidential house in summers and enacted some of his most important works here. Atatürk spent his last days and died here on 10 November 1938