Dolmabahçe Palace was constructed by the imperial architects Karabet Balyan, Ohannes Serveryan, Nikogos Balyan and James William Smith. The palace was inhabited from the year 1856 by six Sultans and the last Caliph: Sultan Abdülmecid (1839-1856), Sultan Abdülaziz (1861-1876), Sultan Murad V (1876), Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909), Sultan Mehmed Reşad V (1909-1918) Sultan Mehmed VI Vahideddin (1918-1922) and the last Caliph Abdülmecid (1922-1924). After the foundation of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stayed temporarily in the palace for a total of 4 years, between 1927-1938. He worked from the palace and passed away there. The palace was used as a presidential residence during the term of İsmet İnönü till the year 1949, and was opened to public as a palace-museum with its original furnishings in 1984.
Today functionally and architecturally, the palace preserves the traditional Turkish house layout of a hall in the middle with rooms surrounding it; nevertheless, Western decoration in styles such Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classic were widely used. Thus, traditional Ottoman stylistic and cultural elements were blended with a Western approach, resulting in a new interpretation.
