Topkapı Palace stories — frequently asked questions

Sultan Mehmed II — Mehmed the Conqueror — began Topkapı Palace in the 1460s, within a decade of taking Constantinople in 1453. The core layout of gates and courtyards was complete by 1478, and nearly every sultan afterwards added to it, so the palace you walk today is four centuries of construction layered on his plan.

Roughly 380 years. From the 1470s until Sultan Abdülmecid I moved the court to the new Dolmabahçe Palace in 1856, Topkapı was the residence of the Ottoman dynasty and the administrative heart of the empire. It became a museum in 1924, in the first year of the Turkish Republic.

The Harem was the private household of the sultan — some 300 rooms of apartments, courtyards and baths where the sultan’s mother, consorts, children and the eunuchs who guarded them lived. Its finest spaces, including the Imperial Hall and the tiled apartments of the Queen Mother, are open to visitors with a separate Harem admission.

The Imperial Treasury displays the 86-carat Spoonmaker’s Diamond and the emerald-set Topkapı Dagger, alongside thrones, aigrettes and jewelled kaftans. The Chamber of Sacred Relics holds the mantle and swords of the Prophet Muhammad, and the former palace kitchens hold one of the finest Chinese porcelain collections on Earth.

Topkapı is Turkish for “Cannon Gate” (top = cannon, kapı = gate). The name originally belonged to a shore gate in the sea walls, flanked by cannon, near a wooden royal pavilion. Over time the name transferred to the whole palace, which the Ottomans themselves had called Saray-ı Cedîd — the New Palace.

The Spoonmaker’s Diamond (Kaşıkçı Elması) is an 86-carat pear-shaped diamond ringed by 49 smaller brilliants, the most famous single object in the Imperial Treasury. Its origin is genuinely uncertain: the best-known tale has a rag-picker finding the stone in an Istanbul rubbish heap and trading it for three wooden spoons — hence the name.

The Chamber of Sacred Relics holds the mantle (Hırka-i Saâdet) and swords of the Prophet Muhammad, hairs from his beard, the swords of the first caliphs, and objects attributed to earlier prophets, including the staff of Moses and the turban of Joseph. Most arrived in 1517, when Sultan Selim I took the caliphate after conquering Egypt.

The Harem was the sultan’s private household, not merely his consorts’ quarters: his mother — the valide sultan, who ran it — his family, children and the staff who served them all lived there, several hundred people in around 300 rooms. It was a strict, hierarchical institution, closer to a palace-within-the-palace than to the fantasy of Orientalist paintings.

Taste and politics. By the mid-19th century the dynasty wanted a modern, European-style court as part of the empire’s reform era, and the medieval, inward-facing Topkapı no longer matched that image. Sultan Abdülmecid I moved the household to the newly built Dolmabahçe Palace in 1856; Topkapı was kept for the relics, the treasury and state ceremonies.

Yes — the 1964 heist film "Topkapi", based on Eric Ambler’s novel "The Light of Day", imagines a plot to steal the emerald-set Topkapı Dagger from the Imperial Treasury. The dagger is real and on display; the film made it world-famous and helped fix the palace in popular imagination as a treasure house.