Topkapi Palace: Inside the Ottoman Sultans’ Court

On the headland of Sarayburnu, where the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara meet, Topkapi Palace was the home of the Ottoman sultans and the seat of their government for close to four hundred years. Mehmed II began it within a few years of taking Constantinople in 1453, and his successors kept adding to it until the court moved to Dolmabahçe in the mid-19th century. What survives is less a single building than a sequence of courts, gates, kiosks and kitchens that set out, room by room, how the empire was run and who was allowed where. On Day 3 of our Small Group Tour of Ancient Turkey, a local guide takes the group through Topkapi Palace in the morning, before the Grand Bazaar and the Basilica Cistern.

Mehmed II and the New Palace

The site was chosen with intent. Sarayburnu had been the acropolis of Byzantium, and before the Ottomans built here it was known as Zeytinlik, the olive grove. According to the Directorate of National Palaces, which manages Topkapi today, Mehmed II built the palace between 1460 and 1478, beginning with gardens and pavilions and then enclosing the headland with the wall known as the Sur-ı Sultani. It was first called the New Palace, to distinguish it from the older palace at Beyazıt in the city centre. The name Topkapı, “Cannon Gate”, came later, from a shoreline pavilion.

Mehmed’s plan was not a single block but a series of courtyards surrounded by colonnades, a layout influenced by the earlier royal palace at Edirne. Each court was more private than the last, and each gate was a social filter. The service buildings were mostly single-storey stone with high domes; the living quarters were stone and timber under lead-covered domes. Later sultans rebuilt and extended almost every part, which is why the palace now reads as several centuries of Ottoman taste on one hill. For the wider arc of the dynasty that ruled from here, our history of the Ottoman Empire from its origins to 1922 gives the context.

The courts of Topkapi Palace, from public to private

The palace was organised into four parts: the Birun or Outer Palace of service buildings and guards; the Divan-ı Hümayun, the Imperial Council; the Enderun or Palace School; and the Harem, the sultan’s private household. Visitors still move through it in that order.

The Imperial Gate, the Bab-ı Hümayun, opens from the streets beside Hagia Sophia into the First Court, a broad open square once lined with the mint, bakeries, a hospital and the workshop of the mat makers who wove the palace’s floor coverings. The Byzantine church of Hagia Irene stands here; the Ottomans used it as an armoury. Anyone could enter this court. Beyond it, the Gate of Salutation, the Bab üs-Selam with its two pointed towers, leads into the Second Court. Only the sultan rode through it; everyone else walked.

The Imperial Council and the Second Court

The Second Court, sometimes called Divan Square, was where the state was put on display. On council days ministers, petitioners and janissaries gathered under its cypresses and plane trees. In the corner stands the Kubbealtı, “under the dome”, the chamber where the Imperial Council of viziers met to hear petitions and decide matters of state. Above the councillors’ bench is a grilled window connected to the Tower of Justice behind. The sultan could listen unseen, and no one in the room could be sure whether he was there.

The Tower of Justice is the tallest structure in the palace and a landmark from the water. It was probably begun under Mehmed II, enlarged under Süleyman the Magnificent, and given its present upper stage under Mahmud II in the 19th century. By the 17th century real power had moved with the grand vizier to his own offices outside the walls, the gate known in Europe as the Sublime Porte, but the council chamber kept its ceremonial role.

Along the right-hand side of the court, facing the Sea of Marmara, run the palace kitchens. They were rebuilt by the architect Sinan after a fire in 1574 and fed a household of several thousand people every day. Today they display one of the great collections of Chinese porcelain outside China, much of it celadon, which the court valued highly.

The Harem: household, school and seat of power

The entrance to the Harem opens off the Second Court beside the Tower of Justice. The word means a protected or forbidden place, and the Harem was the sultan’s private home: his mother, the valide sultan, who ran it; his wives, concubines and children; the women who served them; and the black eunuchs who guarded it under their chief. It was not always at Topkapi. The women of the dynasty lived at the Old Palace until the private household began to move here in the reign of Süleyman in the 16th century, and Murad III greatly extended it later in the century. During the so-called Sultanate of Women in the late 16th and 17th centuries, valide sultans who lived here held real political power.

The result is a warren of courtyards, corridors and chambers, built up over generations and only partly open to visitors. Look for the Courtyard of the Concubines, the apartments of the valide sultan, the domed Imperial Hall where the sultan received his household, and the rooms of the princes, known as the kafes or “cage”, where heirs to the throne were kept in seclusion from the 17th century onward. The finest rooms are lined with Iznik tiles of tulips, carnations and serrated saz leaves.

Is the Harem included in the Topkapi Palace ticket?

At the time of writing, yes: the palace’s standard combined ticket covers the palace, the Harem and Hagia Irene, and the Harem can also be bought as a separate ticket. Older guidebooks that describe the Harem as always being an extra charge are out of date. Turkey’s Museum Card (Müzekart) is not valid for the Harem or Hagia Irene. Ticket arrangements change, so check the Directorate of National Palaces website before you go.

The Third Court: Treasury, relics and the Palace School

The Gate of Felicity, the Bab üs-Saade, was the threshold of the sultan’s own world. No one passed it without his permission. Sultans were enthroned in front of it, and its canopy was redecorated in the rococo style in the 18th century. Directly behind it is the Audience Chamber, where the sultan received ambassadors and his viziers.

Around the Third Court were the halls of the Enderun, the Palace School that trained pages for service in the household and state; its graduates could rise to the highest offices in the empire. The Conqueror’s Pavilion on the right, one of the oldest parts of the palace, houses the Imperial Treasury. Its best-known pieces are the Topkapı Dagger, made in 1747 as a gift for Nadir Shah of Persia and returned to Istanbul after he was assassinated before it arrived, and the Spoonmaker’s Diamond, a stone of about 86 carats ringed by 49 smaller diamonds, whose origin is uncertain.

In the left corner is the Privy Chamber, now the Chamber of the Holy Relics. Selim I brought the relics to Istanbul in the early 16th century, after his conquest of Mamluk Egypt, and they include objects associated with the Prophet Muhammad. The chamber is treated as a sacred space, with Qur’an recitation, and visitors are expected to dress and behave as they would in a mosque.

The Fourth Court and the move to Dolmabahçe

The Fourth Court is a set of terraced gardens and pavilions built for pleasure and with the best views. Murad IV built the Revan Kiosk in 1635 and the Baghdad Kiosk in 1638 to commemorate his campaigns, and both are classic Ottoman pavilions sheathed in tile and marble. Between them a marble terrace with a pool and the small gilded İftariye canopy looks out over the Golden Horn to the Galata shore. Lower down is the Mecidiye Kiosk of 1840, one of the last buildings added to the palace.

That late kiosk is a reminder of how the story ends. By the 1840s Topkapi no longer met the needs of 19th-century state protocol, and Sultan Abdülmecid built Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosphorus shore between 1843 and 1856; the court moved there soon after. Topkapi kept its symbolic role, and on 3 April 1924, months after the Republic was proclaimed, it became Turkey’s first museum of the Republican era. The palace is part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1985.

How long does it take to see Topkapi Palace?

Allow two to three hours for the courts, Treasury and Holy Relics, and closer to half a day if you add the Harem and Hagia Irene. A sensible order is to follow the palace’s own logic, from the First Court inwards, but to visit the Harem and the Treasury early, before the queues for both build through the late morning. Leave the Fourth Court terraces to last; they are the natural place to rest and take in the view.

When is Topkapi Palace open?

At the time of writing, Topkapi Palace is closed on Tuesdays, and the ticket offices are open from 9am to 5pm on the other days. It is also closed on the first day of the Ramadan Bayramı (Eid al-Fitr) holiday. Hours can be extended in summer and occasional night openings have been held, so confirm the current schedule on the Directorate of National Palaces website before planning a visit.

How much walking and what should I wear?

Expect a long morning on your feet, with several hundred metres of walking across each court, cobbled and paved paths, some steps and uneven thresholds in the Harem, and a slope down to the Fourth Court terraces. Comfortable shoes with grip matter more than anything else. There is no general dress code, but cover shoulders and knees for the Chamber of the Holy Relics, and note that photography is restricted in some interior rooms, including the Treasury.

Topkapi within the Istanbul days

The palace sits in the middle of the group’s first days in the city. On Day 2 the tour visits the Hippodrome, Justinian’s Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, all a short walk from the Imperial Gate. After Topkapi on Day 3 the group continues to the Grand Bazaar and then down into the 6th-century Basilica Cistern, which once supplied water to buildings including Topkapi itself. Day 4 is a cruise along the Bosphorus past the Ottoman waterfront mansions; our article on the Bosphorus and the Black Sea coast explains why this strait has mattered to every power that held the city. For the layers of Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul in one place, read our guide to Istanbul as an imperial city.

From Istanbul the journey turns inland to Ankara, Hattusa and Cappadocia and on to the Aegean coast; our 21-day ancient Turkey itinerary from Istanbul to Gallipoli sets out the full route. On the Small Group Tour of Ancient Turkey, an Odyssey Program Leader and a local English-speaking guide travel with a small group of up to 16 travellers, and the morning at Topkapi Palace is where the Ottoman part of the story begins.