Dolmabahçe Palace

 Located in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Turkey, 

on the European coast of the Bosporus strait, Dolmabahçe Palace (Turkish: Dolmabahçe Saray, IPA: [dolmabahte saaj]) was the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1856 to 1887 and from 1909 to 1922 (Yldz Palace was used in the interim

Abdülmecid I, the 31st Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, commissioned the construction of Dolmabahçe Palace, which took place between 1843 and 1856. The Sultan and his family had previously resided at the Topkap Palace; however, Abdülmecid decided to construct a new, state-of-the-art palace near the site of the demolished Beşiktaş Sahil Palace because the medieval Topkap lacked the modern style, luxury, and comfort of the palaces of the European monarchs. Hac Said Aa oversaw the building process, while architects Garabet Balyan, his son Nigoayos Balyan, and Evanis Kalfa brought the vision to life (members of the Armenian Balyan family of Ottoman court architects).

The Selamlk's Outer Walls

Five million Ottoman gold lira were spent on the project, which equates to almost $1.9 billion at current (2021) exchange rates or 35 million tons of gold.

[1][2] About a fifth of the annual tax take might be accounted for by this amount. The building was really funded by debasement, the huge issuance of paper money, and loans from outside. The massive costs weighed heavily on the state treasury and exacerbated the Ottoman Empire's worsening financial condition, leading to a default on the empire's public debt in October 1875 and the subsequent creation in 1881 of financial control over the "sick man of Europe" by European powers.

As the seat of power in Turkey, the palace was occupied by six Sultans between 1856 and 1924, when the Caliphate was abolished. The last monarch to call the palace home was Caliph Abdülmecid Efendi. In accordance with a statute that took effect on March 3, 1924, the palace became part of the new Turkish Republic's collection of national treasures. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, utilized the palace as his summer house and carried out many of his most significant initiatives when he was in office there. This mansion was where Atatürk received his final medical care before his death on November 10, 1938.

The Turkish Grand National Assembly's Directorate of National Palaces is now in charge of maintaining the palace.

Formerly, the Ottoman fleet anchored at the harbour where Dolmabahçe now stands. Dolmabahçe (Filled-in Garden) is derived from the Turkish words for park (dolma) and "filled" (bahçe), therefore the land was progressively recovered throughout the 18th century to become an imperial garden widely admired by the Ottoman sultans. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a collection of smaller summer palaces and wooden pavilions were constructed here, eventually becoming known as Beşiktaş Waterfront Palace. The territory is 110,000 square meters, with Bosporus on the east and a high cliff on the west; but, with the construction of the new 45,000 square meter monoblock Dolmabahçe Palace, just a little amount of land was left for the garden complex that would typically surround a palace of this size.