Yıldız Porcelain Factory

Sultan Abdülhamid II founded the factory in the early 1890s in the garden of Yıldız Palace, as the Yıldız Çini Fabrika-i Hümâyûnu, to revive Turkish tile and porcelain making. The 1894 earthquake damaged it badly, and the Italian architect Raimondo D'Aronco rebuilt it the same year. Like the porcelain works attached to European courts, it supplied the palaces and pavilions, and some pieces were sent as gifts to foreign dynasties.

Production stopped when Abdülhamid was deposed in 1909, restarted in 1910 under the Imperial Museum through Osman Hamdi Bey and ran until the occupation of Istanbul in 1920. Sümerbank took it over in 1959; it passed to the National Palaces in 1995 and has been part of the Presidency's National Palaces Administration since 2018. The Administration calls it a museum-factory: it still makes porcelain.

The National Palaces visiting rules close the historic factories on Saturdays and Sundays (article 6), where the palaces close on Mondays. The factory's own page also lists it as closed on every public and religious holiday in its table, including days on which the palaces stay open.

For a group this is the first question, before content or route. A weekend programme that includes the factory does not work; a weekday programme can pair it with the palace on the same hill.

The ticket the Administration lists for the factory is for the hand-decoration section (El-Dekor Bölümü), not for the whole works. Tell the group before they arrive that they are visiting one part of a factory that is still producing, not a gallery with a full collection, and the visit will match what they expect.

Every piece made at the Yıldız works carries the factory's original crescent-and-star stamp, with the founding year and the year the piece was made written underneath. Some pieces in the naturalistic style depict the buildings and gardens of the period, which makes them documents as well as objects.

The stamp is the most concrete thing you can show a group in a few seconds: one piece, turned over, answers when and where it was made. The factory's products are sold in the factory shop and in the National Palaces shops.

The visiting rules apply to the historic factories as well as to the palaces. A group with a licensed guide that is larger than eight people must use a headset system (article 8), and guides may not narrate loudly indoors without one (article 7). The same rules govern Topkapı and every other unit of the Administration.

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 Administration before the day that it is accepted.

The factory stands inside Yıldız Park, about 700 m in a straight line from the Great Mabeyn Pavilion of Yıldız Palace. Both are closed on different days, so check both before fixing the date. The Ihlamur Pavilions are further west, in the valley on the other side of the palace.