Aynalıkavak Pavilion

Overview

Guide

The Aynalıkavak Pavilion stands on the shore at Hasköy in Beyoğlu, İstanbul. When the city was taken there was a great grove on the slopes of Okmeydanı here, running down towards the water.

In the reign of Selim I the shores of Hasköy gained importance with the building of the naval arsenal, and this grove, with its gardens, came to be called the Arsenal Garden. While Ahmed I was at Edirne, the grand admiral Kayserili Halil Pasha ordered a palace worthy of the sultan to be built in that garden, and the first buildings were finished in 1613.

Murad IV and Sultan İbrahim were both fond of the Arsenal Palace and enlarged it with further buildings. The palace was entirely ruined by a fire in the reign of Mehmed IV and was rebuilt. Seen from Hasköy, all its apartments were visible. The lower floor of the two-storey harem apartment was glazed from end to end, and various buildings stood around the harem and the mabeyn apartments. In 1730 some repairs were carried out and a new garden pavilion was built.

Ahmed III lived at the Arsenal Palace from time to time and stayed here with his household after the circumcision festivities he held at Okmeydanı.

After the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1715 the Venetians presented Ahmed III with large and valuable mirrors, and the sultan had them set in the various halls and rooms of the Arsenal Palace. It is from this that the palace came to be known as Aynalıkavak, the mirrored poplar.

By the end of the eighteenth century, in the reign of Abdülhamid I, the palace was in a ruinous state, and it was repaired.

Visit status for this record: open to visitors.