One palace, our entire day? Yes, and we didn't even see the whole of it.
Top corner of divan in the sultan's private room in the haram.
The sultan Mehmet II, known as the conquer, built Topkapi between 1459-1465. The sultans who followed added on, all the way up to the ninteenth century. (Topkapi was "abandoned" in 1853 by Sultan Abdul Mecit I who moved to a palace across the Bosphorus.) It's a complex-- not a building. An awful lot of the culture of being a sultan is avoiding people. Viziers did the face-to-face. If heads of state visited, an anteroom was decorated and the sultan sat inside and saw the gifts presented at a window. When important domestic matters were discussed, the vizier sat in another part of the complex while the sultan sat one floor above and listened through a window grill.
Window grille above the vizier's place.
The most famous part of the palace is the harem where all the women lived-- perhaps fours wives and then many concubines. Concubines could not be Muslim because it is against the religion to take a believer into slavery. Any of of the male children could rise to be the next sultan-- it depended on which mother was the most in favor, and also, I guess, who survived the palace plotting and assassinations.
Even as old as it is, and in need of even more preservationn and restoration,the interiors of the rooms are very pleasing to the eye. Many rooms have domed ceilings, so they were light and colorful. Walls are all tiled and the hues are still vibrant and complimentary. They are repetitive and have symmetry. When seeing 'old' buildings in North America and Western Europe, many interiors that were colorful have faded over time and seem dark. Tile color has stood the test of time and seems like new. When we walked into an interior we tried to imagine what it would have looked like with carpeted floors-- there would have been patterns absolutely everywhere then-- like being dropped into an exponential kaleidoscope!
The lines were so, so long to see the treasury and the relics, that we diverted, ate lunch in view of the Bosphorus, and spent a longer time in less popular buildings. We outlasted the crowds by looking at portraits of the sultans. There was no one in that gallery, and if you ask me, the last two sultans look worried in their frames.
By 5:00pm we saw hoards leaving and zigged while they zagged. Therefore, we have seen the treasury-- jewel encrusted everything: water flasks, turban jewels, writing boxes, and thrones. Gifts of medallions from other empires: France, Britian, Iran, Saudi Arabia. One of the fanciest thrones was made just 200 years before the Ottoman Empire fell.
What we missed were the relics. The lines to see the staff of Moses and the beard hairs of the prophet, among others, was not shortening at all, so we departed in search of dinner.
We had dinner on a terrace and it was cooked in a clay pot that was cracked open at the table. We also shared meze-- the original dips (like hummus, eggplant, yogurt with cucumber and salt-- they are terrific, especially when it is hot outside.)
After dinner we walked around the hippodrome with thousands of other people. The marker where the chariots turned the corner still stands. It is not quite as tall since the ground has been built up around it over the centuries, but it is as close as I have come to those ancient races. And almost no one else was looking at it-- even though there were thousands of people strolling through the hippodrome and the plaza in front of the Blue Mosque. As we returned to the trolley, we also stumbled upon the milion-- the stone marker that indicated distances to parts of the Roman empire!
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