1856

Early architectual plan of Dolmabahce Palace

Painting of Dolmabahce Palace in 1870s

Before its construction, the site of the Dolmabahce Palace was host to a group of imperial mansions and pavilions – a complex that was known as the Besiktas Waterfront Palace. In 1843, the 31^st Sultan, Abdulmecid, ordered the demolition of Besiktas and the construction of a new grand palace in its place. This Palace would be finished 13 years later in 1856 at massive scale and scope: 45,000 square meters, 285 small rooms, 46 reception rooms, 6 grand Turkish baths, 68 bathrooms, and 4,454 square meters of carpet.[1] From 1856, the Dolmabahce Palace served as the imperial home to the Sultans.

 In the Dolmabahce Palace’s initial period, its memorial value is connected to the ambitions of the Ottoman Empire. We can read the Palace project, which leveled previous standing buildings and erected a massive new structure in a mix of European, Turkish, and Islamic styles, as an exhibition of the Empires wealth and power and its desires to rival the gestural grandiosity of powerful European cities and imperial homes. In Dolmabahce, we see a moment of the Ottoman Empire on the rise and a central source of great power that is able to coordinate such a project. To the people of Istanbul, during the time of Dolmabahce’s construction and the years to come, the Palace carries a vector of memory of the Ottoman moment. Because the grand gesture to power is inherent in the Palace’s structure and form, throughout time the site always holds a foundational layer that suggests collective memory of the dynamics of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-18^th century. As the changing guard of time recontextualizes the site, it necessarily recontextualizes it with reference to this origin.