Istanbul Attractions

Venue: Dolmabahçe Palace    When: Daily; not Mon or Thu

The ornate, luxurious Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul was built as a summer retreat by the Ottoman Sultan during the 19th century.

Constructed using a traditional Turkish design, each section of the palace consists of a large room surrounded by smaller chambers. Incredible interior design by the creator of the Paris Opera, Sechan, is a defining characteristic of the building. The walls, stairwells and pillars are intricately decorated with porphyry and marble while the doors and window frames are made from the finest mahogany and balsam wood.

The three-storey palace has 285 rooms, many of them decorated with an extraordinary collection of crystal. Queen Victoria's present of a chandelier to the Sultan, found hanging in the Holiday Reception Hall, is probably the most famous piece - it weighs four and a half tons and is the largest in existence.

One of the finest rooms in the palace is the "Two-Sided Salon", a room which runs the entire width of the palace overlooking both the sea and the garden. The ceiling is covered in gold-leaf, the floor is an intricate parquet while mirrors are indented with precious stones. Another peculiar feature is the Bird Pavilion, which once stocked birds from all over the world.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, Ataturk, the creator of a secular Turkey, inhabited the palace. He died here on 10 November, 1938 and all the clocks in the palace were stopped at the time of his death as a lasting homage to the "Father of the Turks".