Travel: Istanbul’s secret palaces Patricia Daunt
Patricia Daunt, the wife of a former British Ambassador to Turkey, gives an insider’s guide to the grand embassies of old Constantinople
We tourists visit Istanbul for the incomparable Byzantine and Ottoman monuments. We may also take a boat trip up the Bosphorus and admire the surviving 17th- to 19th-century waterside mansions lining both the Asian and the European shores. What comes next?
With the exception of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Anglican church commemorating the Crimean War, the Christian churches are without great interest. Discerning visitors who have enough time will be tempted to discover what has become of the quarter in which Europeans first settled. Beyoğlu, across the Golden Horn, is most easily accessible by tram, or the Tünel carriages winched up the hill from the northern side of the Galata Bridge.
Cosmopolitan, trendsetting, with distractions to suit almost every taste, 21st-century Beyoğlu holds an unusual extra: the ‘winter embassies’ relished by the ambassadors to the Ottoman Porte. They are the grandest 19th-century diplomatic buildings of any of the imperial capitals and, with the exception of the Italian, are more or less of the same date. Extravagantly built, referred to as palaces, once endowed with prisons, chapels and throne rooms, they stand in grounds protected by high walls. Demoted to ‘consulates’ since the embassies moved to Ankara, but no less monumental for that, all are within a stone’s throw of the Grande Rue de Pera – prosaically renamed İstiklâl Caddesi in 1923.
Small wonder that, until the 1970s, ambassadors accredited to the Turkish Republic abandoned Ataturk’s new capital in early summer and decamped for three months or more to their Istanbul palaces. Residences went under dust sheets; ambassadors travelled complete with household staff, silver, china and glass, leaving their No 2 to mind the Ankara shop. In my day as wife of the British Ambassador, in the late 1980s, there were much less leisurely flying visits to the old capital. Gone were
the yachts and the private secretaries, but a few days in the ‘English Palace’ happily coinciding with the Istanbul summer music festival were no small compensations.
Entertaining the 65-strong English Chamber Orchestra, sponsored by Polly Peck, after its main festival concert, we were surprised to welcome 90 musicians and staff; we were well over a hundred with Turkish guests included. All hands to the pump. I always retained a soft spot for Asil Nadir of Polly Peck, who later collected a heavy prison sentence; he whisked plates and bottles around as an energetic member of the home team to ensure everyone was fed and watered.
The first envoys to the Porte had lived in Galata, but bubonic plague led them to decamp to the vine-clad hills of Pera – today’s Beyoğlu – where the Venetians were the first to move in 1517. The French acquired the best site, enjoying idyllic
views over the Seraglio and beyond to the islands in the Sea of Marmara. A century later, the Dutch were the first to receive, as a gift from the Sultan, a parcel of land on the Grande Rue itself.
The embassy on İstiklâl Caddesi nearest to the entrance of the Tünel is that of the Swedes. Before the great fires of the early 19th century, which swept through Beyoğlu at regular intervals, it was said to have been the finest embassy of all and, it was suggested, completed with monies sent by the Protestant faithful to free Christian slaves. It was reduced to ashes in 1818, but its garden overlooking the Bosphorus remains undamaged. Today’s charming neoclassical 1870 building, designed by the Austrian architect Domenico Pulgher, is sheltered from the bustle of the street and noise of the trams by high walls and trees.
In our day, its elderly ambassador
had the distinguished record of having near-miraculously survived acute peritonitis in Van, Turkey’s easternmost province, during the only tour east of Ankara he ever undertook. He had the good sense to insist that the local Kurdish general surgeon telephoned his doctor in Istanbul. The call was transferred to Istanbul’s leading specialist surgeon; an assistant held the telephone receiver to the Van surgeon’s ear throughout the emergency procedure.
During the mid 18th century, the Russians also acquired a piece of land on the Grande Rue. A shipload of sacred Russian earth was brought in at the command of Catherine the Great so that her embassy ‘should stand on Russian soil’. The palm-fringed neoclassical entrance façade seen through the consulate’s gates is that of a palace of no uncertain grandeur. It was the first embassy to be rebuilt following the catastrophic fire of 1831. A miracle of good Russian workmanship, it was completed in 1837 by the young Swiss architect Guiseppe Fossati, then working on commissions from the Sultan.
Perhaps to rival the Russians and the Swedes, in 1750 the Venetian bailo replaced a lath-and-plaster structure with an imposing brick-and-stone palace standing in an Italianate garden; it can be glimpsed today from Tomtom Kaptan Street. It is the only embassy never to have burned down. With the demise of the Serene Republic, it passed from France to Austria, to united Italy, to become the residence of the Italian ambassador. The Palazzo di Venezia remains the finest of all the residences of visiting ambassadors from Ankara. Its amenities can be guessed at from the fact that the 1992 refurbishment installed fourteen new marble bathrooms.
Following the devastation caused by the 1831 fire which destroyed everything in its path but the Palazzo di Venezia, the Dutch delayed rebuilding until the Russians, French and British had all started on new palaces. In 1850, they commissioned the Fossati brothers to design a small 18th-century French-style château. Pretty as a picture, set back from the bustle of İstiklâl Caddesi, it stands on the ruins of two earlier buildings, while the entrance to the 1612 chapel, reinforced on the foundations of the old prison, is now approached from Tomtom Kaptan Street.
After the 1831 fire, the French ambassador decided that his embassy should be rebuilt in stone rather than wood. In order to secure the contract, the Parisian architect Pierre Laurecisque produced innovative designs complete
with grossly underestimated costings. The 1837 Palais de France stands in grandeur on a raised terrace of levelled rubble, next door to the Italians, clad in the finest fire-resistant Maltese stone. From its grounds, complete with ancient prison, the bell of the Chapel of St Louis-des-français rings out every Sunday.
In my day, as always, the principal embassies eyed each other competitively. The French ambassador’s wife, who became a close friend, was (rightly) dissatisfied with the appearance of her domestic staff: they were not as smart as the Palais merited. She was openly admiring of the red livery the British embassy’s staff wore for work in the mornings and the gold-braided white jackets they changed into every evening. Finally, she acquired from one of them – certainly not direct from me – one of each sort and triumphantly took them to an Ankara tailor to be copied.
Before Boris Johnson got cracking in the Foreign Office, lengthy delays were not unusual in British diplomacy. It was thirteen years after the 1831 fire had destroyed Lord Elgin’s embassy, overlooking the Golden Horn beside the fish and flower market, before it was decided to rebuild. Thomas Smith, disciple of Sir Charles Barry, who designed the Houses of Parliament, was the architect of the imposing
rectangular pile built on a site given by the Sultan. It took ten years to complete and was itself extensively damaged by fire in 1870 and again in 1998. The terrorist bombing in 2003 was followed by extensive alterations, the entrance being switched to the southern side of the site and a sturdy blank wall installed in place of the elegant entrance lodges.
‘An unrelieved mass without architectural worth’ is how Kaiser Wilhelm I’s embassy was described when completed in 1877. Now just one of many large buildings below Taksim Square, Hubert Göbbels’s neo-renaissance celebration of the might of Germany no longer ‘stands out like a sore thumb’ above the Dolmabahçe Palace. Its renovation as a consulate-general 25 years ago reportedly cost two million dollars; it concedes nothing in size and grandeur to its rivals, as any passer-by on İnönü Caddesi can see for himself.
Sadly, the interiors of these relics of an Ottoman past are inaccessible to the general public. There is no chance of seeing the well-attested ghost of a 19th-century diplomat, whom I encountered at a distance at least once every year between 1986 and 1992, near the top of the grand staircase of the ‘English Palace’. Perforce, security of every sort was stepped up after the murderous attack on the British in 2003. But there are worse ways of wiling away a day in modern Beyoğlu than seeking out and viewing the exteriors of the diplomatic palaces of yesteryear.
‘The Palace Lady’s Summerhouse’ by Patricia Daunt is published by Cornucopia (£25)
‘Before Boris Johnson, lengthy delays in diplomacy were not unusual’