Visiting the Topkapi Palace

The Topaki Palace is the home of the Sultans since the mid 1400s but as well the administrative Centre of the empire.   We expect a palace in Western culture to be big, showy and built to impress. This Palace is built to conceal. Many buildings have been added over the reigns of different Sultans. Structured around four increasingly private and smaller courtyards it is of course now a museum of those times of the Sultanate. The Palace is next door to Hagia Sophia, so a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

We began in the first courtyard, a wide open park bounded on one side by the earliest Christian church in Istanbul, the Hagia Irene. This version in stone was built in the mid 500s and was the original Parish church of the early Christians. It is huge by western standards, although much was closed off for restoration. Those damn earthquakes.

On the other side of the park were kitchens with huge bulbous bottle shaped chimneys. These now house display of cooking, porcelain etc. 

We then pass through the Gate of Felicity (I think) into the world of the eunuchs. Here it becomes somewhat dark as these were people stolen from Africa who were castrated at an early age and brought up to be servants of the Sultanate. Certainly they were educated, paid and could leave the service after a time; some became very powerful people in their own right. We saw the dormitories of the lowest level eunuchs, lower and upper levels by seniority with living quarters clear by day and with bedding pulled from cupboards in the walls like a pull-down sofa bed. Their roles were to serve as guards, teachers of the Sultan’s children and general servants according to skill and talent. 

The room of a higher status eunuch

The next Courtyard led into the world of the women servants, who were also taken as children from ?local regions and again educated in how to behave, reading, singing and general deportment. Some could be chosen as concubines to the higher echelons. A woman’s status soared when she provided the Sultan a son, and she much earned better apartments. For all the women of the court, a female servant slept in tiny spaces above the woman’s apartment that Esra called ‘cages’.

The educated women often wed the educated sons of the court, and everyone seemed to find their place in a well-ordered society (for the upper eschelons at least).

The last courtyard area was the administrative and private quarters of the Sultans. We saw increasingly ornate tiles, although these were in the eunuchs and ladies quarters as well. The bathrooms of the sultans were amazing, where the sultan’s mother had her apartments and her bathrooms, and reading rooms. Although probably not always used for the purpose now in the names was the Treasury, Mint, a Library (which was used as such), a circumcision room, pavilion this, pavilion that. Where the Sultan’s body was ritually washed was outside! And rather than being made of exquisite tiles, was made from Byzantium era stones that may have had special significance. I was a bit over-tiled by the end. 

Although we must never forget that the word turquoise is from the colour originating in Turkish tiles, later stolen by the French it seems.

When we all separated to for some private wandering at the end I went in search of the exhibit of Constantine, not clicking that I was in the wrong dynasty for that! What Esra had actually said was costumes not Constans, and so so at the door I declined to inspect the caftans of the sultans - something no doubt I will come to deeply regret.

We lunched that day at a rooftop restaurant. It was not quite as special as the opening night’s one. But it seemed we had booked it out, and could avoid the ring of chairs around the outer edges which were quite hot. We had a lovely cheese soup, a tiny dumpling in the middle of a lovely decorated white platter, a sausage mince ‘steak’ and then 'foamy' halva, all delicious and I did not refuse any dish, I am, however, enjoying Coke Zero while others quaff their wines or beer.

Nearly had an argument with two of the group (sisters) who felt that genetic genealogy was either a rort or an immoral practice since indigenous peoples were not equally presented and represented in the databases, as of 10 years ago. I let the conversation go.