Palace Collections Museum

The Palace Collections Museum is in the Matbah-ı Âmire, the palace kitchens of Dolmabahçe Palace, which Sultan Abdülmecid had built. It has three parts: an art gallery, the museum itself and a store.

The collection brings together objects used in the late Ottoman palaces: from Dolmabahçe, Beylerbeyi, Topkapı and Yıldız palaces and from the Aynalıkavak, Küçüksu, Ihlamur and Maslak pavilions, along with products of the Yıldız porcelain works and the Hereke carpet and textile factory. It was built up through commissions, purchases and gifts.

The display is arranged by theme. The Administration lists thirteen: the Sultan Abdülhamid II collection, children's clothing, education and play, furniture, calligraphy and writing sets, porcelain, embroidery, silver-gilt table services, Hereke fabrics, lighting, heating, health and industrial devices, clocks and musical instruments, and books from the library of the last caliph, Abdülmecid Efendi.

A group that stops at every theme sees none of them properly. Pick three or four that connect to the rest of your programme, say in advance why, and give the group time to browse the others on their own.

The third part is the store (depo). The nineteenth-century palaces and pavilions hold tens of thousands of objects, used in daily life or on special occasions, that have no place in their present furnishings. They used to be kept in separate stores in each building. The Administration gathered them into one store designed to current museum standards, with controlled climate and earthquake risk in mind, and opened it to visitors on 18 October 2016. It describes the store as the first and only one of its kind in Turkey.

For a group this is a different way of looking: shelves and racks rather than a composed room. Say so before you go in, so that nobody expects another furnished hall.

The Palace Collections Museum is run by the National Palaces Administration, and its visiting rules make a headset system mandatory once a group with a licensed guide is larger than eight people (article 8). Guides may not narrate loudly indoors without one (article 7), and staff can remove a visitor who ignores the rules from the site. This is a written rule, not a courtesy.

The rules do not name a type of system. If you plan to use anything other than the familiar rented sets, a phone-based system like ours included, confirm with the palace administration that it is accepted before the day. The article texts, every site the rule covers and the ways to meet it are on our Topkapı headset rule page.

Because the objects come from every palace, the museum works best late in a palace programme, when the group has stood in the rooms they came from. A few of the threads it can close:

• Personal belongings of Abdülhamid II brought from Yıldız Palace, including the phaeton he used and his carpentry tools. As a prince he worked in his own carpentry workshop at the Maslak Pavilions.
• Porcelain bought from France, Germany and Britain or received as diplomatic gifts, alongside products of the Yıldız porcelain works.
• Fabrics from the Hereke factory, which produced only for the palace: curtain and upholstery fabrics used in furnishing the Ottoman palaces.
• Objects from Aynalıkavak, Ihlamur, Küçüksu and Beylerbeyi, the other palace sites a National Palaces programme may include.

The museum stands on the same shore as Dolmabahçe Palace, about 200 m beyond the Painting Museum towards Beşiktaş as the crow flies (OpenStreetMap). Its address is on Dolmabahçe Caddesi, next to the Presidential Office, and the Administration sells a ticket for it alone.

It is also on the combined ticket for Dolmabahçe Palace and the European-side pavilions, with Aynalıkavak, Maslak and Ihlamur (article 9). Combined tickets are valid for 30 days, and each venue can be entered once in that time. The MüzeKart, the card Turkish citizens use, is valid here: the rules accept it across the National Palaces (article 12), and the museum is not on the Administration's list of exceptions.