After its restoration … the Ottoman Palaces Museum in Istanbul, in a new look

After the restoration work was recently completed and acquired a new look, the Museum of the Ottoman Royal Palaces has turned into a center of interest for tourists, especially with the widespread spread of its photos on social media, especially among young people.

The museum’s covered area is 11 thousand square meters, and it houses 34 halls and 553 artworks, and it is today a candidate to be a new center for culture and artistic life in Turkey. Read also From a small emirate in Anatolia to the gates of Vienna … the “European” Ottoman Empire and its role in shaping the old continent Ottoman Constantinople in the eyes of its Christians … the Conqueror Sultan as seen by the Orthodox, Catholics and Armenians The “European” Ottoman Sultanate .. A French reading of the Six-Centuries Empire and its interaction with the Old Continent Pictures of Ottoman Damascus as you have never seen it before .. The journey of the German Emperor Gilium II at the end of the nineteenth century

It was built in 1856 by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majid I (1823-1861) under the name “The Office of the Crown Prince”, in the Beşiktaş neighborhood of Istanbul, and it gained special importance after its opening in the republican era as a meeting place for art lovers.

It contains collections of paintings dating back to the period between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries AD, and includes paintings of the Ottoman sultans and pictures of important historical events and oriental and natural works, as well as paintings of Istanbul and its urban and urban character in that era.

The collections in it include works by Ottoman and foreign painters such as the Armenian Ruben Manas, the Polish Stanislav Chlebovsky, the Italian Fausto Zonaro, the Russian Ivan Aivazovsky, the French Eugene Fromentin, and his compatriot Felix Augusti Clement, as well as the Ottomans: Shukr Ahmed Pasha, Osman Hamdi Bey, Shawkat Dagh, and Shawkat Dagh. Majid Effendi, and others.

Ottoman palaces paintings

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Gulsen Swing Kaya, director of the Museum of Ottoman Royal Palaces Paintings, said that the latter has a special significance in terms of being the only representative of Ottoman palaces paintings.

Kaya stated that the museum includes 34 sections distributed according to the themes of the paintings, and that its administration exhibited works of art, some of which are well-known but not sufficiently studied, according to a completely new perspective within the framework of substantive integration.

She stated that the museum management was keen to focus on presenting the contents and topics of the paintings and highlighting them, instead of focusing on the building, which is also considered a masterpiece.

“We recently completed restoration work in the museum to attract the attention of visitors, and it was restored with innovative methods, especially in terms of lighting systems, framing, and arranging according to artistic works,” she said.

“Moreover, we focused on displaying the original paintings on the ceiling of the museum and highlighting them through the lighting system,” she added.

The director stated that the museum’s management was also keen on enriching the existing art collections by listing more paintings in the archives department of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

She explained that a workshop was established to restore the paintings transferred from the Archives Department in the Topkabi Palace to the museum, and the artworks and paintings were documented in the stages before, during and after the restoration. Advertising

The workshop was able to restore 199 paintings, while the gilding workshop restored 104 paintings, and the binding and paper restoration workshop revived 34 documents and pieces of art and incorporated them into cultural life, according to Kaya, who stressed the importance of collecting historical artworks, paintings and artifacts that adorned The walls and pillars of the Ottoman palaces in one museum.

Painting Orientalist Art

Kaya pointed out that the museum houses the largest painting of Orientalist art in Turkey, noting that the painting known as “Hunting in the Desert” is considered one of the most important works of the French painter Felix Auguste Clement.

She explained that the museum’s management managed, in 2019, with a successful operation, to transfer a large canvas of 35 square meters, drawn in 1865, from “Said Halim Pasha’s Palace” in Istanbul to the museum, indicating that the painting shows the depth of social and cultural relations between the Ottoman Empire and Egypt.

Historians claim that Abd al-Halim Pasha ordered the French painter Clement to draw this painting, to be a new decoration in his palace in Egypt, before it was transferred to Istanbul, and later placed in Yildiz Palace in the city.