Dolmabahçe & Beşiktaş

“Yesterday I gazed upon you from a hill, beloved Istanbul!” So begins Yahya Kemal’s famous poem. Now, had the poet’s hill been one of the Yıldız slopes, what would we see in the view spread before his eyes? The currents of the Bosphorus, the slopes of Üsküdar on the far shore, and right at our feet, at the water’s edge, a palace stretching out in gleaming white… Yet once there was neither palace nor garden there; there was only the sea.