TOPKAPI PALACE
This magnificent edifice was not merely a palace where, during centuries, sultans just wandered about, received education, enjoyed themselves, and dwelt with members of their vast families;
the Topkapi Palace was also the site from where the Empire was administerest, where the divan
( supreme council ) held meetings president by the Sultan, where foreign ambassadors were received, the starting point of military campaigns; where imperial princes, viziers, etc. were put to death, where pays were distributed to janissaries and to other soldiers, and where all important ceremonies took place: In short, ıt was also the center of the Ottoman state administration.
This is why The Topkapi Palace of those days was a "small town" accomodating forty thousand people including, besides the Sultan's harem and his soldiers, also extremely varied responsible belonging to all sorts of professions.
The entrance to the palace is through the Imperial Gate built during the reign of the COn queror and which opens to the cşity towards Haghia Sophia, and this ares, referred to as the
"First Court", leads us to the "Second Gate" of the Palace.
Whem we pass through the "Middle Gate", beyond which, in the past, only the Sultan was allowed to pass mounted, we enter the "second Court" on the immediate right of which rise the kitchens in the form of a building with twenty domes placed on two rows.
These sections where, besides over 12.000 pieces of Chinese imperial porcelain, Japanese, European and Istanbul porcelain and glassware are exhibited, completed the court together with the
"Kubbealtı" which was the palace for the "Divan" ( government ) where visiers held meeting in the palace and, with the "Bab-üs Saadet" ( Gate of Felicity ) where
ceremonies of accession to the throne were held. Another particularity of this "Second Court",
apart from that of being the site where enthronement and a great many official ceremoniesand festivities were effectuated, is also that of being an area occupied many a times by insurgent soldiers.
A View of Topkapi Palace
Immediately behind these sections, in the "Fourth Court" exposed to the Marmara Sea and to the
Bosphorus, rise a great many edifices, adorned with tiles and other forms of ornamentation and which constitute masterpieces of interior decoration such as the Mecidiye,
Baghdad, Revan, and Sofa Kioks and the Circumcision Room. These are sites where, Sultans, in the past, spent their daily time, loitered, and got rest.
As for the section which is on the left of all three inner courts and which views the
Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, this is where the famous "Harem Pavilions"
are, the access of which is through paved courtyards and terraces. The " Harem Pavilions" where, in the past, Sultan's mother's wives, and innumerable favorites and, their servants and guards lived;
and which included the Sultans dining and bedrooms and entertainment halls, are formed by sections peculiar to themselves, by rooms which constitute masterpieces of decoration.
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