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The Accidental Palace: The Making of Yildiz in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul

By (author) Deniz TÃ¼rker

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| book description |

This book tells the story of YÄ±ldÄ±z Palace in Istanbul, the last and largest imperial residential complex of the Ottoman Empire. Today, the palace is physically fragmented and has been all but erased from Istanbulâ€™s urban memory. At its peak, however, YÄ±ldÄ±z was a global city in miniature and the center of the empireâ€™s vast bureaucratic apparatus. Following a chronological arc from 1795 to 1909, The Accidental Palace shows how the site developed from a rural estate of the queen mothers into the heart of Ottoman government. Nominally, the palace may have belonged to the rarefied realm of the Ottoman elite, but as Deniz TÃ¼rker reveals, the development of the site was profoundly connected to Istanbulâ€™s urban history and to changing conceptions of empire, absolutism, diplomacy, reform, and the public. TÃ¼rker explores these connections, framing YÄ±ldÄ±z Palace and its grounds not only as a hermetic expression of imperial identity but also as a product of an increasingly globalized consumer culture, defined by access to a vast number of goods and services across geographical boundaries. Drawn from archival research conducted in YÄ±ldÄ±zâ€™s imperial library, The Accidental Palace provides important insights into a decisive moment in the palaceâ€™s architectural and landscape history and demonstrates how YÄ±ldÄ±z was inextricably tied to ideas of sovereignty, visibility, taste, and self-fashioning. It will appeal to specialists in the art, architecture, politics, and culture of nineteenth-century Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.