About Topkapı Palace
Mehmed II began the palace in 1459, six years after taking Constantinople, on the point where the Bosphorus meets the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn. From there the sultans ruled until the court moved to Dolmabahçe in the mid-19th century. In 1924, a decree turned the complex into a museum.
The visit is a sequence of courtyards, each more private than the last. The Harem, where the sultan's mother, wives and children lived, had more than 400 rooms. In the Treasury, the crowd gathers in front of the Spoonmaker's Diamond and the Topkapı Dagger.
