Money, wealth and Divine Right can cause a man to some incredible things and in the case of the Ottoman Sultans they created a palace the like of which are only matched by the other great empires of the world. This isn't so much a massive home as in Versailles or Buckingham but a complex organized into sections that were create to give the Sultans the feeling that he was living a normal life... normal if you had wealth beyond imagination but were trying to live a modest life.
The outer courtyard is massive and filled with lush lawns, buildings that once housed the feared Janissary warriors and the campus for the Sultan's Harem. Sorry guys, the harem wasn't the naked orgy party that western myth makes it out to be any more than a Geisha is a prostitute. The Harem was a sacred collection of women that were raised and trained to be companions to the Sultans and this training could take decades.
The inner courtyard was not only the home of the Sultan, his family and attendants but it had a school, a mosque, several administration centers, a building for sacred relics, a museum, an art gallery and many more distractions to occupy a Sultan's day. The humble opulence, if such a thing can exist, was striking. These men knew how to strike a balance between ruler of an Empire and man of the people.
Two things really got to me. The first was the collection of items said to be those of the Prophet Muhammed. There were containers that housed his clothing, collections of small jars and even swords that are said to have belonged to him. Whether these are legitimate artifacts or not didn't matter to me. What touched me was the reverence and piety given by the muslim visitors to this collection. This was like Christians visiting the Shroud of Turin or Jews seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whether the items are what they claim to be or not, millions of people visit and want to believe.
The second thing that got to me was the amazing view of the Bosporus that was reserved for the Sultan. From a terrace I went out on he would be able to survey his empire for miles while simultaneously being given a view fit for... well...a Sultan. The photo below is a small part the view. I knelt down and shot it through an opening in the ornate marble guardrail that surrounded the terrace.
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