Çırağan Palace

Çırağan Palace as seen from the Bosphorus

The Çırağan Palace , also Tschiragan Palace ( Turkish Çırağan Sarayı ) in Istanbul in Turkey is a former sultan's palace and is now a 5-star luxury hotel .

location

The palace is located in Beşiktaş directly on the Bosphorus , south of Ortaköy . Behind the Çırağan Palace is Yıldız Park .

history

In the 16th century, the waterfront property on which today's palace hotel stands belonged to Admiral Kilic Ali Pascha . The property called Kazancıoğlu Garden stretched from Beşiktaş to Ortaköy.

Mary Wortley Montagu , the wife of the English ambassador Edward Wortley Montagu to the Ottoman Empire , described the Çırağan Palace in a letter around 1717 with the words: It stands in one of the most beautiful places on the canal, and behind it there is a hill with a beautiful forest . Its dimensions are amazing; the guard assured me that it had eight hundred rooms, which I can neither confirm nor deny, since I have not counted them; however, the number is certainly very large, and everything is lavishly decorated with marble, gold, and wonderful paintings of fruits and flowers. The windows are made of the finest crystal glass from England, and it is here that you experience all the sumptuous splendor one would expect from a palace built by a young man with all the riches of a great empire .

Ahmet III. gave the Kazancıoğlu garden to his son-in-law, the Grand Vizier İbrahim Pasha of Nevsehir, who built the first “Yalı” (waterfront villa) there. Together with his wife Fatma Sultan, he organized festivities there with torch lighting, which were soon called Çırağan Şenlikleri (Çırağan Festival of Lights ). This is where the current name Çırağan comes from. For a time, Mahmut I's palace was also used as a banquet hall for state guests.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the property of the Grand Vizier of Sultan Selim III. who had the building demolished and a new palace built by the Armenian architect Krikor Balyan in 1805 as a gift for the ruler. This in turn passed the property on to his sister Beyhan, who did not want to accept the gift. Subsequently, Sultan Mahmud II used the complex as a summer residence. He had the palace demolished again, this time to be rebuilt in a splendid style by the architect Garabed Balyan . In 1855, Sultan Abdülmecid I decided to take his official residence in the Palace of Dolmabahçe . This caused another demolition and rebuilding, this time by Nigogos Balian. However, due to political crises and the associated financial problems, the building could not be completed until 1857 under Sultan Abdülaziz . Under Sultan Abdülaziz, the palace underwent an architectural change in style to Arabic, for which artists were sent to North Africa and Spain to make copies of famous buildings there. According to legend, the plans of the building were redrawn twenty times due to the ruler's changing wishes.

In the Berlin Museum you can now admire some of the palace doors, each of which was made for a thousand pieces of gold. These doors were a gift to Kaiser Wilhelm II , who had admired the pieces extensively during a visit to Istanbul. Sultan Murat V was held with his family in the Çırağan Palace after a coup until his death in 1904. From November 14, 1909, the palace served as a parliament for two months. In 1910 the palace was destroyed in a fire. Only the outer walls remained. In 1946, the ruins of the building and the park were handed over by the parliament to the Istanbul municipality. The community used the ruins on the Bosporus as a building material depot and sports field.

In 1987 the palace was taken over by a Japanese group of investors and expanded as a palace hotel for the Kempinski hotel group. The interior was designed in a Mediterranean style. Since then, the hotel has been part of The Leading Hotels of the World .

In 2007 the hotel underwent another major renovation.