Büyük Valide Han

This guide to Büyük Valide Han in Istanbul opens with Kösem Sultan, the Greek-born regent who ruled behind three Ottoman sultans and founded this vast caravanserai in 1651 — the same year she was strangled in a palace coup, before it was finished. It follows the han's courtyards, the much older Byzantine tower she repurposed as her treasury, and the Persian silk and carpet merchants who later made it their headquarters, building the city's only Shiite mosque inside its walls. Listen for how Ashura Day mourning once wound through these same stones.