Is it a Life Experience?: Topkapi Palace

Now the only downside to staying at the Empress Zoe is that we are right between three mosques and so we have the "Call to Prayer" in triplicate. The imam from the Blue Mosque is superb but he is quickly drowned out by a raspy voiced imam from Aya Sophia.

This morning the 5.00am call prompted Roger to get out his sketch book and head to the Blue Mosque before the crowds arrived.

Spurred on by our early morning energy we decided to visit Topkapi Palace which is right behind our hotel... Thanks to Errol we already had museum passes and we were able to get to the palace before the disgorged tourists.

The Palace abounds with stories of infanticide, intrigue and imprisonment...Princes murdered by suspicious fathers or locked for a lifetime in their sumptuous rooms. The largest section open to tourists is the Harem and there are of course copious stories about it.

To enter the Harem you walk down a long corridor emblazoned with the gold signature of the Sultan and embellished with glorious blue and green tiles. What must those young Christian slave girls (and they were always Christian, never Muslim) have felt as they left the world behind and walked through the clanking doors to the heart of the Palace - from which successive sultans had ruled the Ottoman Empire for 400 years.

We heard stories of the different orders of eunuch, who suffered various levels of castration; of unco-operative concubines being put into weighted sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus; and of Sultan Ibrahim I, who ordered the drowning of his entire harem of 280 girls on a whim.

It wasn’t only the girls who were locked away though. One of the sultan’s bathrooms - a sumptuous series of marbled chambers - had its own gilded iron gates, so that he could lock himself in while he washed, to protect himself from assassination attempts.

Even more sinister were the two rooms known as the gilded cage, or the twin kiosk. They are perhaps the most beautiful of all of the living quarters, with stained-glass windows surrounded by Iznik tiling, a huge sitting platform, elaborate gilded fireplaces, and spectacular painted dome over the innermost room.

But they too were in a gilded prison.

Until the 17th century there had been a brutal tradition that justified a sultan killing all his male relatives to ensure that the sultanate passed to a favoured son. So, for example, in 1595, Mehmed III’s 19 brothers were murdered at the instigation of his mother, while seven of his father’s pregnant concubines were put into sacks and drowned at sea. It was so sad to see the Mausoleums where there were rows of little tombs cloaked in green. I couldn't bear to take a photo.

Selim II, finally decreed that all princes should survive, but they were to be locked away from public life until the succession. This, of course was only to be another form of brutality, which hardly prepared the youths for good government. One, Suleyman II, spent 39 years in the gilded cage, and it was only with great difficulty that, in 1687, he was persuaded to leave and take up the sultanate.

We were glad to move on to more everyday stories...The Harem was a busy place as there could be up to 300 concubines in residence within the complex at one time, plus distinguished guests, eunochs, servants etc. The sheer organisation was amazing - rows of kitchens each dedicated to a particular dish and with specialised cooking utensils. Up to 3000 meals could be cooked in any one day as well as soup kitchens for the poor.

There were even schoolrooms - apparently all concubines had to be properly educated before they were fit to serve the sultan.

Design wasn't only in the intricate tiling and stained glass but also in the practical world such as drainage and natural lighting systems... These simple skylights (bottom left) let in light but no heat and the drainage was designed to provide beauty and relaxing sounds.

Phew! After all that time for lunch overlooking the Bospherous... amazing to see the fully loaded ships passing by every ten minutes. The efficiency and hard work of the Turks is incredible. Each ship met magically on time by a pilot boat leading them in or out of port. The destinations of the ships set our imaginations on fire... Russian and Baltic states, Europe and Asia...