Dolmabahçe Palace

This guide to Istanbul's Dolmabahce Palace opens with Sultan Abdulmecid the First, haunted by how modest his court looked next to Europe's, ordering the old waterfront palace torn down and this one built in its place as a statement in marble and crystal. It follows the cost of that statement, including a giant chandelier long credited to a gift from Queen Victoria until a 2006 discovery told a different story, and the roughly thirty-five tonnes of gold that helped push the empire toward bankruptcy within a generation. The guide also lingers on a single preserved room that carries the palace's story into the twentieth century. Worth slowing down in the ceremonial hall to take in the scale of what the sultan was trying to prove.