While passing under the famous portal gate of Dolmabahce Palace, you will see the office for audio guide devices at your left.

Official museum guides as your hosts  will company you to take the audio guides in correct language among the options: 🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇵🇸 🇬🇷 🇮🇹 🇷🇺 🇧🇦 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 🇮🇳 🇨🇳 🇰🇷 🇯🇵

You can cancel until 24h remaining to your chosen time. 

Deposits for auido guide devices: Everybody must leave an ID (like a citizen ID, driver license) as a deposit to take back when you return while leaving. If you do not have any ID on you, €100 or $100 could be left with a receipt to take back again when leaving. The windows to return are just at the only exit gate of the Dolmabahce Palace complex. 

Dolmabahçe Palace starts to impress its visitors right before the entrance.

• It stands at the nicest corner of Bosphorus to enjoy the best view over Istanbul landscape.
• Its grandiose portal gates will fascinate you and reset your expectations.
• Its lavish gardens offer a pleasant walk between a perfect Bosphorus panorama and aesthetic architecture. So, you may feel a touch of the royal taste even before going in.

The halls, rooms and corridors inside the Dolmabahçe Palace will exhibit the environment, styles and even lives of the sultans, queens, palace officials, state bureaucrats and many more.

• The Imperial Hall will make you dizzy with its size, volume and decorative details.
• The sultans flashy reception hall, modest study room or the traditional bath rooms will reals the royal life of its time.
• If you opt for the Harem Section, you will see the residential part for the royal family too.

This is like an all access booking! Basically, with this ticket, you may visit the reception areas, sultans' offices and meeting halls, highly decorated rooms and salons, the Harem section and all of its collections, and finally the famous imperial ball room that defines the meaning of grandiose in royal ways.

The average time spent inside around 100 minutes if you want to see the both sections and gardens. Still, there is no time limit for vists with this ticket. 

Dolmabahce Palace Complex is also famous for its beautiful cafes inside. The first one is right on the Bosphorus shores behind th clock tower. Another one is at the botanique gardens of the Dolmabahce Palace Museum with a green house. And the last one inside the paintings section at the very end.

Dolmabahce Palace represents a hallmark among the fundamental changes of 19th century in Istanbul and Ottoman Empire. Amdulmecid I, the 31st sultan of the Ottoman Dynasty who ruled between 1839 and 1861, had left the former royal residence Topkapi Palace after almost 4 centuries. The constuction of Dolmabahce Palace took 15 years where the Ottoman family enjoyed a modern houshold with a clear architectural plan and infrastructure comparing to the late-medieval Topkapi. Moreover, the furnitures and various decorative elements at Dolmabahce Palace could be seen as a new way of living in a much more European fashion. 

The successing sultansi Abdulaziz, Murad V, Abdulhamid II, Mehmed Reshad and Vahdeddin lived at Dolmabahce Palace too. Important to note, Abdulhamid II had mostly resided at and ruled from the Yildiz Palace which is in the parks of Yildiz over the hillside behind the Dolmabahce Palace. The final member of the royal family living at the Domabahce Palace was Abdulmecid II, who shortly held the title Califate before the abolishment of the caliphal position by the republican regime to the parliament.   

The architects of the Dolmabahce Palace are known as the Balyans(namely Garabet and Nikoğos, father and son), then a well-established Armenian family in Istanbul. Speaking of the Balyans, the clock tower was constructed by a future sultan Abdulhamid II after 35 years and the architect was Sarkis Balyan from the same family. The mosque at the tower side is called BezmiAlem Valide Sultan, the mother of Abdulmecid I. 

The majority of the walls of the Dolmabahce Palace were formed out of limestone in order to build the complex as light as possible. Because, the ground is a reclaimed area on former marsh at the bay. Only the portal gates and some prestigious corners are built of marble blocks. 

Dolmabahçe is the largest palace in Turkey even today with an area of 45,000 m2 (11.1 acres), and contains almost 300 rooms, 45 halls, 6 hamams (Turkish Bath). 

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the Dolmabahce Palace Museum

The founder of the Republic of Türkiye, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk moved the capital city to Ankara as the leader of Turkish National Independence was saved after a short period of occupation by the winning side of the WWI. Then, he came back to Istanbul first time in the year 1927 and he had stayed in the Dolmabahçe Palace when he was in Istanbul. Finally, he passed away in 1938, November 10th. His chamber from his final days is still open for visits in the Harem Section of the Dolmabahçe Palace.