Guide
The Maslak Pavilions sit in a wooded park beside the main road linking Levent and Ayazaga in İstanbul. Building here seems to have started under Mahmud II, when the area served the sultans as a hunting and resting ground. Who built the pavilions and exactly when is not recorded, though most of the group is dated to the reign of Abdülaziz. Their particular interest is what happened in them: the pavilions were assigned to Abdülhamid II while he was still a prince, and it was here that he received the summons to the Ottoman throne. Between 1937 and 1982 the buildings served a very different purpose, as a military preventorium for people at risk of tuberculosis.
Four structures have come down to us from the original complex, set in a copse inside some 170 donums of forest: the Kasr-i Hümayun, the Mabeyn-i Hümayun with its conservatory, the Çadır Köşk, and the Pasha's Quarters. They look out towards the point where the Bosphorus opens to the Black Sea, and they are good examples of late nineteenth-century Ottoman timber domestic building and decoration. The Kasr-i Hümayun has been restored from documents, memoirs and old photographs and is open as a house museum. The Mabeyn-i Hümayun with its conservatory and the Çadır Köşk with its garden were restored in the same spirit and now hold cafes; the conservatory's camellias flower in winter. The grounds are also used for receptions. The address is Büyükdere Caddesi in Darüşşafaka, and İETT buses and minibuses stop nearby.
