The Aynalıkavak Pavilion in Hasköy: the last Ottoman kiosk of the Golden Horn in Istanbul

On the northern shore of the Golden Horn, in the Hasköy neighbourhood of Beyoğlu, survives one of the last Ottoman garden pavilions of Istanbul. The Aynalıkavak Kasrı is the sole survivor of a complex that in the 18th century numbered some fifteen buildings scattered across steep gardens: shipyards, urbanisation and fires wiped out the rest, leaving this one kiosk standing. The name means more or less "the mirrored poplars" and refers to the Venetian mirrors that arrived as a diplomatic gift from Venice after the Peace of Passarowitz of 1718, which ended the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1714-1718, some of which still decorate the interiors.

The architecture

The exact origins are uncertain: the sources waver between a 17th-century core and later additions, but the building took its present form under Sultan Selim III, at the end of the 18th century, and was restored under Mahmud II by the Armenian architect Kirkor Balyan, of the famous Balyan family. What you see today is classic Ottoman mainland architecture, not the showy baroque of the palaces on the Bosphorus: low, airy rooms, painted wooden ceilings, and above all the revzen, the coloured stained-glass windows set into plaster tracery that filter the light above the windows. It is a restrained decorative language, made of proportions and details, that rewards those who stop to look closely.

A diplomatic episode

Here the so-called Convention of Aynalıkavak was signed, on 9 January 1784, between the Ottoman Empire of Sultan Abdülhamid I and the Russia of Catherine II: the agreement in effect sanctioned the Russian annexation of Crimea, until then a formally independent khanate. A diplomatic episode of some weight, decided in a pavilion that today almost no visitor connects to that event.

The music museum

The basement houses the Museum of Turkish Music Instruments, linked to a research centre on Ottoman classical music. The choice is no accident: Selim III, besides being sultan, was a composer, and the building is remembered as a place where he played and created. The core of the collection was born in 1984 from the donation of Gevheri Osmanoğlu, a descendant of Abdülhamid II, and has since been enriched with instruments belonging to musicians and collectors: it reaches some sixty instruments, from various types of saz and lutes to drums and wind instruments, plus a couple of hundred old 78 rpm records and scores. It is a compact section, suited to those who want to understand how the Ottoman court really sounded.

How to get there

To get there, the most evocative way is the Golden Horn ferry (Haliç line) to the Hasköy pier: from there you climb on foot towards the palace, about eight hundred metres on a gentle rise, some ten minutes. Alternatively there is the T5 tram, which runs along the Golden Horn shore and stops at Hasköy a few minutes from the entrance. Roughly speaking the museum is open every day except Monday, during daytime hours, but it is best to check hours and tickets on the website of the Directorate of National Palaces (Milli Saraylar) before setting out, as they vary. Photography is not allowed inside; there is a small café and the garden where you can sit after the visit.

It remains one of the most overlooked monuments of Istanbul precisely because of its position: Hasköy is a residential area with an old shipbuilding tradition, off the Sultanahmet-Taksim axis, and almost no tour passes through. It pairs well with a day along the Golden Horn, perhaps with the Rahmi Koç industrial museum a short distance away, also in Hasköy.

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