This tomb began as something else. When the tomb of Hatice Turhan Valide Sultan was built in 1663 at the Yeni Camii complex, a darülkurra — a room where the Quran was recited — was attached to its eyvan. Women of the Ottoman house came to be buried in it, and with that its function changed and it took the name Havatin.
It is one of three tombs that stand together: Hatice Turhan's, this one, and the nineteenth-century Cedid Havatin tomb added to the north. Eighty-two members of the dynasty are buried in the group.
The three were restored together over a period of years and reopened to visitors when the work was finished.
The scale of that restoration is worth knowing, because it explains what a visitor sees. The contract was signed on 10 October 2012 and the work took six years. According to the minister's account at the reopening, about twenty-five separate headings of work were carried out, from gold leaf, moulded plasterwork, painted decoration and the completion of patterns to stone cleaning and the repair of the system room. The name plates, the cloths over the cenotaphs and the fezzes and turbans on them were renewed and put back inside. The minister described the group of three tombs as holding a very important and distinct place in Ottoman tomb architecture, and said the thorough restoration was undertaken because eighty-two members of the dynasty lie in them.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
