Ciragan Palace Kempinski

This guide to Çırağan Palace in Istanbul, now the Kempinski hotel, centers on the night of May 20, 1878, when two hundred and fifty armed men crossed the Bosphorus to storm these gates. Their target was Murad V, a deposed sultan who had reigned ninety-three days before his brother declared him unfit and locked him away here, and their leader was a rebel named Ali Suavi who had rallied Circassian refugees to free him. It follows the palace itself from that confinement through a 1910 fire that gutted it down to its outer walls, and its 1990s rebirth under new chandeliers.