Galata Mevlevihanesi Museum

This guide to the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul follows the oldest Mevlevi lodge in the city, founded in 1491 for the Sufi brotherhood devoted to the poet Rumi and known for the whirling sema ceremony. It centers on Sheikh Galib, a young poet who trained here, rose to lead the lodge, and became a close friend of Sultan Selim the Third while composing what would become one of the last great works of classical Ottoman poetry. The guide also follows the lodge through Ataturk's 1925 ban on Sufi orders and its decades of silence before reopening as a museum. Stand in the octagonal semahane where the dervishes once turned.