Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts

The museum sits in the Palace of Ibrahim Pasha, a sixteenth-century Ottoman residence rising on arches above the old Hippodrome, right beside Sultanahmet Square. Suleiman the Magnificent had it repaired and gave it in 1520 to his son-in-law and grand vizier. Few private palaces of the age have survived in Istanbul, so the building is an exhibit in its own right, and visitors reach the first galleries by climbing steps from a broad terrace that the wings enclose on three sides.

The collection was the first in Turkey to bring Turkish and Islamic art together. It opened in 1914 in the soup-kitchen building of the Süleymaniye complex and moved here in 1983. After a restoration finished in 2012 it was reinstalled with new displays, and it has won European recognition for its work, including an award for introducing children to cultural heritage.

The carpets are the reason many people come. The museum is known for one of the finest rug collections anywhere, with rare thirteenth-century Seljuk pieces among its masterpieces, and large glazed halls hold Turkish carpets in remarkable numbers. Around them you will find manuscripts, glass, stone and terracotta objects, metalwork and ceramics from the Abbasid, Mamluk, Seljuk and Ottoman worlds. Downstairs, the ethnography rooms show how ordinary people lived in Turkey over the last few centuries.