Topkapı Palace
After the conquest of Istanbul by Mehmed the Conqueror at 1453, construction of the Topkapı Palace was started in the year 1460 and completed in 1478. The palace was built upon a 700,000 square meter area on an Eastern Roman Acropolis located on the Istanbul Peninsula between the Sea of Marmara, Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Topkapı Palace was the administrative, educational, and art center of the Empire for nearly four hundred years from Mehmed the Conqueror until Sultan Abdulmecid who was the thirty-first Sultan. Although Topkapi Palace was abandoned by the Ottoman Dynasty by moving to the Dolmabahçe Palace in the middle of the 19th century, Topkapı Palace retained its importance.