Dolmabahce Palace and Harem Fast-Track Ticket with Audio Guide Device

Dolmabahçe Palace, the Ottoman court on the Bosphorus

Dolmabahçe Palace was built between 1843 and 1856 for Sultan Abdülmecid I, who moved the court here from Topkapı to a palace that looked like the great residences of Europe, designed by the Balyan family of imperial architects. Its six-hundred-metre white marble facade runs along the European shore of the Bosphorus between Kabataş and Beşiktaş, and behind it are two hundred and eighty-five rooms and forty-six halls decorated with crystal, gilding and silk, with fourteen tonnes of gold leaf said to cover the ceilings. Six sultans lived here, and the palace later served as the Istanbul residence of the Republic's first president, whose rooms are preserved.

A Dolmabahçe Palace tour on your own with the audio device takes about two to three hours across the Selamlık, the Harem and the gardens; is Dolmabahçe worth visiting after Topkapı? Yes, because it shows the opposite end of Ottoman history, the nineteenth-century empire looking west.

The Selamlık: Crystal Staircase and Ceremonial Hall

The Selamlık is the public and administrative half of the palace, and the route takes you through its most famous spaces in order: the Medhal Hall where ambassadors waited, the Crystal Staircase with its crystal balusters under a glass dome, the reception salons with their Hereke carpets and painted ceilings, and the sultan's bath lined in Egyptian alabaster. Every room looks out either onto the Bosphorus or the gardens, and the audio guide explains the protocol that governed who could pass each door.

The climax is the Ceremonial Hall, a thirty-six-metre-high domed space with fifty-six columns where the great crystal chandelier, weighing four and a half tonnes, hangs over the floor used for enthronements and state receptions. Photography is not permitted inside the palace rooms, so give yourself time to simply look; the hall is the most spectacular room of any palace in Istanbul.

The Harem: the private palace

The Harem occupies the northern half of the building and was the private world of the sultan, his mother, wives, children and the women who ran the household; it is reached by a separate route and is included in this ticket, which not every Dolmabahçe ticket offers. The rooms are more intimate than the Selamlık but no less rich: the Blue Hall and Pink Hall for family ceremonies, the apartments of the sultan's mother, nurseries, baths and long corridors with Bosphorus-facing windows.

The Harem also contains the rooms used by the Republic's first president in his final years, kept as they were, which is why many Turkish visitors treat this part of the visit with particular respect. Allow forty-five minutes to an hour for the Harem; the audio guide has a separate chapter for each salon, and the gardens between the two sections are a good place to rest on a bench by the water.

The gardens, the clock tower and the waterfront

Before or after the interiors, walk the gardens that wrap around the palace: formal lawns, a round pool with swans, magnolias and palms, and the ornate Dolmabahçe Clock Tower at the ceremonial gate, built in the 1890s and the classic photo of the visit with the palace mosque beside it. The Treasury Gate, where you enter, and the Imperial Gate on the Bosphorus side are among the most photographed gates in Istanbul, and the sea wall gives a view across to Üsküdar and the Maiden's Tower.

The Dolmabahçe Palace and Bosphorus cruise option builds on exactly this: a sightseeing cruise ticket that lets you see the full marble facade from the water, the way visiting dignitaries first saw it, before or after your walk through the rooms. Both parts are valid over two days, so you can take the cruise from Eminönü or Kabataş in the afternoon of the palace day or on the next.

The practical visit and Yıldız Palace

The visitor entrance is on the Beşiktaş waterfront, a five-minute walk from the Kabataş stop of the T1 tram and the funicular from Taksim, or ten minutes from the Beşiktaş ferry pier. Dolmabahçe Palace opening hours are 09:00 to 18:00 with last admission an hour before closing, and the palace is closed on Mondays; our Istanbul team recommends arriving at opening, because the security line, which nobody can skip, grows through the morning and can reach thirty minutes in high season. Leave your passport or ID as a deposit for the audio device and collect it on the way out.

The Yıldız Palace option adds, over two days, the last residence of the sultans on the wooded hill above Beşiktaş, recently reopened after a long restoration, with its pavilions, porcelain and the gardens of Yıldız Park; transport between the two palaces, about fifteen minutes by taxi, is not included.