Asian side · Beykoz
Beykoz Mecidiye Pavilion
The first masonry pavilion on the Bosphorus, a gift from the governor of Egypt.
Photographs of this palace are coming soon.
History
Mehmed Ali Pasha, governor of Egypt, began the pavilion for Sultan Abdülmecid in 1845. When he died, his son Said Pasha completed it in 1854 and presented it to the sultan. It predates Dolmabahçe and Beylerbeyi and is counted as the first masonry building on the Bosphorus in the “new style”.
During the Crimean War the volunteer zeybek troops gathered on the Beykoz meadow were quartered here. Abdülaziz used it often in summer; Empress Eugénie was given a banquet here on 15 October 1869, and Sultan Reşad held a spring feast in the garden for members of parliament on 21 May 1910.
It later served as an orphanage, a hospital and a children’s chest hospital. It passed to the National Palaces in 1997, was restored between 2010 and 2016 and opened as a museum on 11 April 2017.
What to see
The building
Two storeys, symmetrical, with a Neoclassical front in Italian stone and local white marble — a nineteenth-century take on the Ottoman “serdab” pavilion.
The interior
Coloured porphyry decoration throughout.
The setting
The pavilion crowns a wooded park that rises in terraces from the shore.
Before you go
- A garden-only ticket is sold.
- It is the farthest north of the nine; combine it with Küçüksu on the same shore.
Questions
Which day is the Beykoz Mecidiye Pavilion closed?
Monday.