The second gate into Topkapi Palace. Today it is the main admis­sion gate into the museum.

Topkapi Palace located in Istanbul, was the headquar­ters for the Ottamen Empire for more then 400 years. Today it is a museum. When we went it cost 20 Turkish Lira per person, and if we wanted to go into the Harem it would cost an addi­tional 15 Turkish Lira per person. The ticket for enter­ing the Harem has to be bought once you are inside the Topkapi Palace.

The palace is con­struc­ted around a series of court­yards, all of which are very beau­ti­ful and peace­ful. The first court­yard is free of charge. In Ottoman days this court­yard was open to all, but in order to walk through the gate into the second court­yard you had to be some sort of dig­nit­ary (see the photo above of the second gate).

Only the sultan and his family could enter this gate. Through it were the private (i.e. cir­cum­cision room) and res­id­en­tial areas of the palace. The gate was used for special cere­mon­ies, acces­sion and to perform the funeral service of the sultan. Today tour­ists flock through it and attempt to take photos of kittens in front of it, like our infam­ous Chris, center stage.

Within this court­yard for dig­nit­ar­ies and offi­cials is the courtroom where the men took care of the Empires offi­cial matters. Apparently the sultan use to sit behind a mesh screen and listen to the dis­cus­sions and debates, pre­tend­ing as if he was a fly on the wall and no one knew of his pres­ence. However, it was known for him to some­times speak up and com­pletely over­rule the decision of all those in the room. I found it quite comical to imagine it happening.

The gold, mesh rect­angle in the center of this photo is the screen behind which the sultan would secretly listen to the dis­cus­sions and debates of the Ottoman Empires officials.

aOne of the many detailed designs found on the ceiling of a room in Topkapi Palace.

The atten­tion to detail in Topkapi Palace is remarkable.

This is the interior of a build­ing called the Baghdad Kiosk, located in the res­id­en­tial area of the sultan. It is an excel­lent example of the famous blue Iznik tiles and mother-of-pearl inlay found through­out Ottoman archi­tec­ture in Turkey.

The most mag­ni­fi­cent things housed in Topkapi Palace are the jewels, like the worlds fifth largest diamond which was ori­gin­ally traded for three spoons giving it the nick­name, Spoonmaker’s Diamond. The col­lec­tion also has some of the worlds largest and most pristine emer­alds found on the Topkapi Dagger which had a movie (1964) made about it called, Topkapi. But, as you can imagine, we were not aloud to take photos of such pre­cious items.