Beylerbeyi Palace

About Beylerbeyi Palace

Beylerbeyi Palace sits right on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, in the Beylerbeyi neighborhood of Uskudar, just below the first Bosphorus bridge. It was built in the 1860s under Sultan Abdulaziz as a summer residence for the Ottoman sultans and a place to put up visiting royalty and heads of state. Because it was a warm-weather palace rather than a full-time seat of government, it feels smaller and more relaxed than somewhere like Topkapi or Dolmabahce, though the decoration is anything but modest.

Inside, a ticket gets you through the State Apartments and the Valide Sultan rooms, named for the Queen Mother. The look is heavy imperial: Bohemian crystal chandeliers, marble, fine woodwork, and reception halls used for entertaining foreign guests. Outside, landscaped gardens run down toward the water, with wide views across the Bosphorus to the European side. Those views, and the sense of standing right at the waterline under the bridge, are a big part of why people make the trip over to the Asian shore.

The palace is a little off the standard old-city trail, since most of Istanbul's headline sights cluster around Sultanahmet on the European side. Getting here usually means crossing the Bosphorus, and many visitors pair it with a wider tour of the Asian side or a boat outing on the strait. It's a paid-entry site, and an audio guide is a common add-on that helps make sense of the rooms and their history. Photography rules inside can vary, so it's worth checking current arrangements before you go, along with the day the palace is closed for the week.