Topkapı Palace

Topkapı Palace is in Istanbul, a big city in Türkiye.

It sits on a hill by the water. Inside its walls are courtyards, gardens, fountains and many buildings with domes. Long ago, rulers called sultans lived here.

Topkapı Palace stands on a hilly point of land in the oldest part of Istanbul, where the Bosphorus Strait, the Sea of Marmara and an inlet called the Golden Horn meet. The point is called Sarayburnu.

For nearly four centuries this was the home of the Ottoman sultans and the center of their government. It is not one big building but a group of buildings around four great courtyards, with gardens, fountains and pools. Today the palace and its grounds cover nearly 350,000 square meters, and it is a museum full of treasures and old documents.

The palace occupies Sarayburnu, the headland of Istanbul's historic peninsula between the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, once the site of the Eastern Roman acropolis. The Directorate of National Palaces records that it was the center of Ottoman government, education and art and the sultans' official residence for nearly four centuries, until the reign of Abdülmecid (1839 to 1861). The palace area once covered 700,000 square meters; today the palace and grounds cover nearly 350,000, excluding Gülhane Park, once part of the palace gardens.

UNESCO includes Topkapı in the Historic Areas of Istanbul (inscribed 1985), describing it, with the Süleymaniye complex, as a supreme example of the palace and religious ensembles of the Ottoman period, continually extended until the 19th century.

To get inside, you walk through one big gate after another.

Each gate leads to a new courtyard. In one, the sultan's council met to run the empire. In the last one, there are pretty pavilions and a tulip garden.

Visitors pass through a chain of gates. The Royal Gate leads into the first courtyard, a big open square. The Gate of Greeting leads into the second courtyard, where the Imperial Council met under a dome and where a tall Tower of Justice rises. The Gate of Felicity leads into the third courtyard, with the Palace School and the sultan's Audience Chamber.

The fourth courtyard has terraced gardens and elegant pavilions, like the Baghdad and Revan pavilions, and a Tulip Garden. One small tower there was once the palace pharmacy.

The monumental two-story Bâb-ı Hümâyun, signed by the calligrapher Ali b. Yahyâ es-Sûfî, opens onto the first court, the Alay Meydanı or Procession Square, ringed by the Church of Saint Eirene, the Mint, bakeries, a hospital and the workshop of the reed mat makers who wove the palace's floor mats. The Bâbüsselâm (Gate of Greeting) leads to the second court, Divan Square, with the Kubbealtı council chamber, the treasury, the Tower of Justice, the Harem entrance and the Royal Stables.

The Bâbüssaâde (Gate of Felicity) opens onto the third, Enderun court, with the Audience Chamber, the halls of the palace school and the treasury called the Pavilion of the Conqueror. The fourth court holds royal pavilions: the Baghdad and Revan pavilions, examples of classical Ottoman pavilion architecture, the wooden Sofa Pavilion beside the Tulip Garden, inscribed with couplets by the poet Hâkânî Mehmed Bey, and the Stone Tower, once the palace pharmacy.

Today, Topkapı is a museum.

Visitors walk through its courtyards and gardens. They see old treasures and documents from the days of the sultans.

Topkapı Palace became a museum in 1924, the first museum of the new Republic of Türkiye. Today it is run by the Directorate of National Palaces. With its buildings, collections and nearly 300,000 old documents, the Directorate calls it one of the largest palace-museums in the world.

Part of the old palace gardens is now Gülhane Park, a public park. The palace is part of UNESCO's Historic Areas of Istanbul, which has been a World Heritage Site since 1985, together with buildings like Hagia Sophia.

The Directorate of National Palaces, to which Topkapı was attached by a resolution in the Official Gazette of September 6, 2019, describes it, with its historic buildings, collections and nearly 300,000 archive documents, as one of the largest museum-palaces in the world. Gülhane Park, once part of the palace gardens, is now a public park outside the museum grounds.

UNESCO's Historic Areas of Istanbul, inscribed in 1985, lists the 15th-century Topkapı Palace within the Archaeological Park at the tip of the historic peninsula, and notes that planning measures preserve the skyline of Topkapı, Hagia Sophia and Süleymaniye.