Dolmabahce and the Military Museum

Today we finally got to go to Dolmahbace, the most recent and most European palaces of the Ottoman Empire, built in the 1840s and 50s. The Palace is located right on the Bosphorus and is huge - according to Prof. Shields, the Sultan paid 35 tons of gold - more than 1 billion dollars today- on the palace, effectively bankrupting the empire. The architecture is supposed to resemble the buildings of Versailles.

Here is one of the entrances:



Here's a picture of the group:



The inside was even more imposing than the outside - rooms were covered in gold leaf and full of gifts from English, Russian, French and other European monarchs. The palace was built as a modern home for the sultan (in comparison to Topkapi palace built in the 1460s) and was supposed to emulate the West in all senses. It was a symbol of the Ottomans looking to the West instead of the East. The main room, which was used to hold receptions and entertain guests, was a staggering 35 meters tall - check out how small people look compared to the first floor columns in this picture (the next three pictures were taken by Kristina, so give credit to her for their being good):


People who had been to Versailles said Dolmabahce looked like Versailles on steroids -- as is obvious from this picture of the great hall:


The chandelier you see was suspended from the ceiling and weighed approximately 5 tons. The dome of this room was particularly impressive, as a group of Turkish, Italian and French artists worked to give it a 3-dimensional effect, enhancing how big it seemed:


Here's another good picture of the group outside:


The sultan himself stayed in two different sections, with one of his room in the harem. The harem was like the one at Topkapi with a more European look. The sultan's bed was 6 square meters big.

After the palace, we got some lunch and headed up to the Military Museum, where Kevin and I did a presentation on the Conquest of Istanbul, the Armenian "issue", as they referred to it in the museum, and other stuff. We also saw a presentation of the Mehter band, the Janissary band that was the first military marching band in Europe:



Since I didn't post yesterday, I'll go ahead and brief you on one of the more exciting moments. We went to a music museum where a group of musicians played traditional Tartar music with instruments I had never even seen before. After a while, the music became more intense and one man began twirling in circles as a form of prayer - what we call a Whirling Dervish. Technically, this practice is illegal in Turkey, but from our discussion with other Sufis - a branch of Sunni Islam - the ban is a non-issue:



After the ceremony was done, we were invited to dinner and even were dragged into a Turkish dance party that ended up being very fun, even if us Americans had no idea what we were doing: