Mansion and Waterside Museums of the Northern Bosphorus

Within the natural woodland of the Belgrad Forest, beside the Bahçeköy-Kemerburgaz road, the arboretum is a living collection in which trees and woody plants are displayed in a scientific arrangement. The idea came in 1949 from Hayrettin Kayacık, a lecturer at the Faculty of Forestry; after his proposal to the General Directorate of Forestry, work began on a 38-hectare site beside the Büyükdere-Bahçeköy-Kemerburgaz road, and a specialist from the botanical garden of the Sorbonne in Paris was invited to Istanbul to draw up the project. Although the project stalled for lack of funds, infrastructure and planting continued until 1982, when the arboretum took its present name to mark the centenary of Atatürk's birth. Its official pages name the General Directorate of Forestry, the Bahçeköy Forest Enterprise and the Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Forestry together.

On the paths around the ponds you can get to know species such as Weymouth pine, giant sequoia, white spruce, blue spruce, Spanish fir and Uludağ fir. Before you go, look at the What to See This Month section of the arboretum's website for the season's highlights. The rules are strict: no food or drink other than water, no pets, and no drones, tripods, monopods or gimbals; payment is by credit or debit card only. The arboretum is closed on Mondays. Starting the day here with a quiet walk among the trees makes a good balance before the mansions and waterside museums.

Source: Atatürk Arboretumu resmi sitesi; Wikipedia.

These two wooden waterside houses in Büyükdere are home to Turkey's first private museum. Founded within the Vehbi Koç Foundation to display the objects collected by Sadberk Koç, the museum opened on 14 October 1980, seven years after her death, when her family fulfilled her wish. Before it could open, regulations allowing private individuals to found museums had to be drawn up. The main building is the Azaryan Yalı: a three-storey 19th-century house with a wooden attic, bought by the Koç family in 1950 and used as their summer home, then converted into a museum between 1978 and 1980 to a design by the architect Sedat Hakkı Eldem. The house next door was restored in 1988 and added to the museum as the Sevgi Gönül Building, and the restoration received a Europa Nostra award that year.

Start in the Sevgi Gönül Building, which holds the archaeology collection from the 6th millennium BC to the end of the Byzantine period, with terracotta, glass and metalwork. Then move to the Azaryan Yalı, where the strengths of the collection are Iznik tiles and ceramics of the 15th to 17th centuries, Ottoman women's costume, embroidery and accessories from slippers to fans. As you walk through the rooms, look out of the windows at the bay; this is where you understand how the sea looked from inside a yalı. The collection now numbers some 20,000 objects and is enriched by temporary exhibitions. The museum is closed on Wednesdays, on 1 January and on the first day of religious holidays.

Source: Sadberk Hanım Müzesi resmi sitesi; Wikipedia.

Behind high walls among the skyscrapers of Büyükdere Avenue, these pavilions were the home of Abdülhamid II's years as a prince. Built by Sultan Abdülaziz in the 1860s, they were given in 1868 to his nephew, Prince Abdülhamid. The name comes from the water-distribution cisterns, called maslak, that supplied the city from this area at the time. Abdülhamid bred horses, raised livestock and farmed here, buying up the surrounding land to create a large estate that was known during his reign as the Imperial Maslak Farms. According to memoirs cited by the National Palaces, he lived simply with his family, gave his children music lessons, wrote poems and composed, and spent much of his time in his own carpentry workshop. He was here in 1876 when he was called to the throne.

Used as a military sanatorium from 1937 to 1982, the pavilions became a house museum of the National Palaces after restoration in 1984. The grounds of about 170,000 square metres hold the Kasr-ı Hümayun that served as the harem, the Mabeyn-i Hümayun reception building, a viewing pavilion for watching mounted drills, a pool, a bath, an orangery, stables and a kitchen. In rooms designed on the plan of the traditional Turkish house, notice the simplicity of the halls and the arrangement of rooms; comparing it with the display of Yıldız is revealing. If you come in winter, visit the orangery: the camellias that Abdülhamid brought from France as a prince and planted with his own hands flower in midwinter. The greenhouse with its tropical plants is another highlight of the garden. Closed on Mondays.

Source: Milli Saraylar Başkanlığı; Wikipedia.

The Atlı Köşk in Emirgan is the route's 20th-century building. The site was first occupied by the Mustafa Pasha waterside house, which Abdülhamid II gave to Prince Nikola of Montenegro in 1889. In 1923 Prince Mehmed Ali Hasan, grandson of Khedive İsmail Pasha, bought the dilapidated house, had it pulled down and commissioned a new mansion from the Italian architect Edouard De Nari; it was finished in 1927, but the prince never lived in it. Hacı Ömer Sabancı bought the mansion from the khedival family in 1951, and the family began spending its summers here. People call it the Atlı Köşk, the Horse Mansion, because of the bronze horse in the garden, made in 1864 by the French sculptor Louis Daumas and bought in 1952 at the auction of the Marble Mansion in Moda.

In 1998 the Sabancı family gave the mansion and its collection to Sabancı University, and the museum opened in 2002. On the ground floor are memorial rooms arranged with the furniture the family used while living here, and upstairs the collection of book arts and calligraphy; the painting collection spans the late Ottoman and Republican periods. A modern gallery added to the mansion hosts major temporary exhibitions. Seeing in the memorial rooms how a mansion was lived in as a home makes a good contrast with the next stop, a mansion that earned its haunted name before it was ever finished. Leave time for the stone pieces in the garden, such as sculptures, fountains and columns, and for the lawns facing the Bosphorus. The museum is closed on Mondays; entry is announced as free on Tuesdays, but check current terms on the official website.

Source: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi resmi sitesi; Wikipedia.

In Rumelihisarı, close to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, this castle-like red-brick building began life as the mansion of Yusuf Ziya Pasha. Construction for Yusuf Ziya Pasha, chief aide-de-camp to Khedive Abbas Hilmi Pasha of Egypt, started in the 1910s; when the First World War broke out in 1914 and the Ottoman Empire entered it, the craftsmen were called up and the work could not be completed. Because its unfinished floors stood empty for decades, the building came to be known locally as Perili Köşk, the Haunted Mansion. It was sold in 1993, and between 1995 and 2000 the architect Hakan Kıran carried out the survey, restitution, restoration and implementation projects. The stone and brick cladding of the facade was completed faithful to the original design, with bricks brought from England, while the interiors were turned into a modern workplace.

Since 2007 the building has been the headquarters of Borusan Holding. Since 2011 Borusan Contemporary has turned this weekday office into an art venue at weekends, with exhibitions focusing on photography, video, sound, light and software-based work, new media art in its widest sense. Seeing works placed beside desks and meeting rooms makes the visit unusual. The building is placed to look up the Bosphorus towards the Black Sea on one side and down towards the Sea of Marmara on the other, so glance out of the windows on the exhibition floors too. The museum is open only on Saturdays and Sundays; free guided tours last about 40 minutes, take up to 15 people and cannot be booked. It can close briefly while new exhibitions are installed, so check the official website before you go.

Source: Borusan Contemporary resmi sitesi; Wikipedia.