One of the few surviving Byzantine churches in Istanbul is Hagia Eirene, which is within the walled enclosure of the Topkapi Palace grounds. This edifice was built under Justinian in 537, the same time frame as the more famous Hagia Sophia. While its history may not be as illustrious, the Hagia Eirene did see service as an arsenal structure during Ottoman times and later as a museum with military and archaeological displays. It was restored in the 1970’s and is currently employed as a concert hall during the summertime Istanbul Music Festival.

Dating from 1472, the Tiled Pavilion (Cinili Kosku) is one of the few surviving structures from the original Topkapi Palace. Originally a hunting lodge, the pavilion was also a repository for various antiquities. Befitting the turquoise ceramic tiles and the blue and white calligraphy, this is now the Museum of Turkish Tiles.

The Archaeological Museum, located just inside the first court of the Topkapi grounds, was founded by preeminent Turkish archaeologist Hamdi Bey in 1881. Bey led the 1887 expedition in Sidon, Syria that produced one of the museum’s treasures, the well-preserved “Alexander Sarcophagus”. A new wing was added to the museum in 1991, but the complex is bursting with sculptures and antiquities from the Greek and Roman eras.

The Museum of the Ancient Orient, which is like a sister museum of the Archaeological Museum, greets visitors with two giant Hittite lion sculptures at the front entrance. While some may take a snapshot of this cartoonish pair and run off to the next site, it is worth it to check out the Anatolian antiquities inside. Perhaps its most famous relic is the Treaty of Kadesh, a clay tablet impressed by the Hittites and Egyptians and therefore recognized as the world’s oldest recognized peace treaty. If you like to see Hittite ruins and do not have time to see the related sites in central Turkey, this museum is for you. Ditto if you like Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Uraryian....

Walk up through the park to arrive at the palace, although the signage at the base of the hill can be a bit confusing upon first inspection. There are separate and substantial fees for visiting the palace, the harem and the treasury collections. If you are pressed for time, skip the gaudy imperial treasury housed in the pavilion of Fatih (with alluring items like the emerald-encrusted Topkapi Dagger and the Spoonmaker's Diamond) but under no circumstances should you pass up the opportunity to venture inside the Harem!

The Harem, marked by the Divan tower of 1825, can only be visited by guided tours that begin every half-hour. We did get a guide who spoke English, but that is not always the case. The crowd for each tour can make the spaces seem a bit confining, but there is enough room to see many of the remarkable interiors. You will only see a fraction of the 400-plus rooms, but that is good enough. Allegedly the general public still has never seen many of these rooms. Especially impressive are the grandiose Imperial Hall and the main bedchambers.

The palace consists of many buildings, gates, pavilions and courtyards, so it can be easy to miss something. Constructed for Murat IV in 1638, the delicate Baghdad Pavilion is worth a look. The Pavilion of the Holy Mantle is the home for various holy relics. The chimneyed kitchens are impressive in sheer scale if not in glittery surfaces. There is even a Circumcision Room built in 1642 (one can afford to have such a space if you have hundreds of rooms). There are fabulous views of the Bosphorus from the lookout, which includes a domed canopy dating from 1640. You can spot landmarks like the Galata Tower and the Suleyman Mosque in the distance.

The on-site restaurant has a display of thank you letters from visiting dignitaries and heads of state. Other than dining here, there are only a few snack carts in the vicinity with meager offerings of soft drinks and ice cream, so plan to eat before or after your visit here. The plateau of the palace may seem rather isolated from the rest of the city, and one could spend a whole day at the Topkapi.

The harem is the private quarters of the Sultan. The image is that it would be full of beautiful woman belonging to the Sultan. However, these women were not all his lovers; his sisters, mother, and sons also lived here. Also, it was an institution to educate girls who were given as presents or bought. Once more, they would not all be the sultan’s lovers. These girls would get a good education and marry noblemen or statesmen of the Ottoman Empire. I hope we have cleared a misunderstanding here.

Islam allows men to have more than one woman, if they are all treated equally. (This is a crime in modern Turkish republic.) Also, it was legal that the sultan would kill all his brothers after he was crowned. The sultan’s ladies, who were lucky enough to have a son from him, would do anything to protect their precious sons from the attacks of competing ladies. If you have a good guide, he or she will inform you all about the palace politics and even show you the little chambers where the sehzades were kept (sehzade is the crown prince). The harem is a place to learn how a lady lived 400 years ago.

There is also a school called Enderun in the palace where they used to educate small boys to be great statesman, soldiers, and architects (Mimar Sinan is a good example of this). It is a great experience to see the treasury. A masterpiece for me is the kasikci elmasi, the very precious diamond, and personal items of sultans. Looking at the huge war items and big clothing one will give one the idea that Ottoman sultans were giants. There are also many exhibitions about how life was in the palace.

From the windows and the gardens of the palace, you can feel the sea breeze. The garden is silent now, but once it was full of cheerful ladies and beautiful flower gardens of tulips and roses.

Note that you can't visit Harem all by yourself; you should take a guided tour. There is a guided tour every half hour.

Topkapi Palace was not constructed based on a definite plan. It was expanded in time and underwent several changes. This change was due to necessity of adding of new buildings or the reconstruction in place of the original buildings destroyed by fire or other causes.

Apart from the mansions for residence of sultans and harem section, Topkapi Palace also features many structures such as wards for palace guards, a very spacious kitchen for use of palace residents, dormitories for palace servants, Kubbealti where Divan meetings were held, Hýrka-i Saadet section where belongings of Hz. Mohammed and the Caliphs are kept, Gülhane Hospital, Sultan Ahmed the 3rd Library, Palace School, Treasury Office, a stable for the horses of sultan, and St. Ýrini Church, which was used as a weapon storage for some time.

Topkapý Palace was abandoned in the middle of the nineteenth century and lost its significance as the state center. Indeed, part of a railroad was built on the outdoor garden of Topkapi Palace, which was is a desolate state in the following years. Most recently in 1924, Topkapi Palace was turned into a museum and opened for exhibition.

A highlight of the palace is when you reach a plaza that overlooks modern Istanbul. The breeze here is quite refreshing.

The harem tour costs as much as the Topkapi entrance, and you must buy tickets for it at the entrance. You cannot enter the Harem without a tour, and so the experience loses something when you cannot linger. The harem is bereft of its furnishings and may not be very interesting.