Tuesday 26 September 2006

Tiled Kiosk (çinli Kösk) of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror

Until recently, closed for renovation, I was thrilled to finally see this museum. Turkish ceramic art is one of my favourite things.

The Lonely Planet Istanbul Guide says:
This building is thought to be the oldest surviving non-religious building in İstanbul. It was built in 1472 as an outer pavilion of the Topkapı Palace. It was used for watching sporting events. The recessed doorway area is covered with tiles – sometimes with white calligraphy on blue. The geometric patterns and colour of the tiles –turquoise, white, black – on the façade show Selcuk influence.

Much of the interior of the kiosk is covered with triangular and hexagonal tiles of brown, green, yellow and blue.

Much of the exhibition features İznik tiles from the 17th and 18th centuries.











4 comments:

Ineke said...

Hi Sally, pleased to discover you have an Istanbul site too!
I plan to go there (for the second time but the first was yeaaars ago)with my sister end October. Is there a nice hotel you could recommend? We think of simply booking a ticket and dealing with a hotel once we're there.

Sally said...

Hmmm, I'm sorry dutchie, I can't recommend a hotel at this time because I stayed with friends.

However, I found the Lonely Planey Guidebook exceptionally good, and I am sure there are good recommendations in there. You could try their free Internet site too (there's a link to it from my Sydney blog)

annulla said...

Those colors are fabulous, so deep and rich. Sigh. Your posts make me long to go to Istanbul.

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