Adile Sultan Palace
Turkey
About
The palace was built for the Ottoman princess Adile Sultan (1825-1898), the daughter of Sultan Mahmud II (1785-1839) and the sister of the Sultans Abdülmecid I (1823-1861) and Abdülaziz (1830-1876), by the legendary Ottoman Armenian architect Sarkis Balyan. It was erected on the same place of a kiosk, which was presented to her by Sultan Abdülmecid in 1856. The palace was commissioned by Sultan Abdülaziz and built by the renowned court architect Sarkis Balyan in 1861. It stands at one of the most glorious places, on a hill, which is a headland in the middle of Bosphorus on the Asian shore. This location enables a wonderful panoramic view of Bosphorus reaching from Sea of Marmara to Black Sea seen out of all the rooms in three sides of the building. The palace with 55 rooms was on a ground of 17,000 m².Adile Sultan, a great and the only Turkish royal female poet having a Diwan, lived here until the death of her husband Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1868. She donated her residence to the state to be used as a high school for girls after her death in 1898. Before it was used as determined, the palace came a short while under the control of Ministry of War during World War I. Only in 1916, it could be turned to a secondary school for girls and the first graduates left the school in 1920. The school was named 1924 after its location, Kandilli Secondary School. In 1931, the school became Kandilli High School for Girls, a respected educational institution since then. The classes of the high school moved to a new building in 1969. The old palace was used as dormitory for boarding girls of the school until 1986, when it was burnt down due to an electrical short-circuit. The historic building became a ruin consisting of only four walls.
