Turkey Guide
İstanbul
İbrahim Paşa Sarayı: the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art
Address: On the eastern side of the Hippodrome
Opening time: Daily except Mon 9am–5pm
Price: 4YTL
The İbrahim Paşa Sarayı (Palace of İbrahim Paşa) is now the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art (Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi), an attractive, well-planned museum, containing one of the best-exhibited collections of Islamic artefacts in the world. The sixteenth-century setting of cool, darkened rooms around a central garden courtyard obviates the necessity for expensive technology to keep the sun off the remarkable exhibits, which highlight the wealth and complexity of Islamic art and culture. The museum boasts an excellent courtyard café.
The palace itself is one of the few private Ottoman residences to have survived – at least in part – the fires that periodically destroyed large areas of the city. The main concentration of exhibits deals with Selçuk, Mamluk and Ottoman Turkish art, though there are also several important Timurid and Persian works on display.