Naval Museum (Deniz Müzesi)

Naval Museum (Deniz Müzesi) Review

Founded in 1897 and located here since 1961, Istanbul's Naval Museum is set to open a huge, state-of-the-art, new building on the water's edge in mid-2012 that will enable it to fully showcase its vast collection of Ottoman-era vessels and maritime paraphernalia. The most impressive are the kayiks (caiques)—long, slim wooden boats rowed by dozens of oarsmen, that served as the primary mode of royal transportation for several hundred years. These graceful boats are decorated with intricate carvings covered with gold leaf and each has an equally ornate pavilion that was built for the sultan or his wife. Other highlights of the collection include a 17th-century Ottoman warship and a monstrous 23-ton cannon built for Sultan Selim the Grim. The museum's original building has remained open and will continue to house smaller artifacts—mostly ship models, paintings, and old maps—that give a good sense of the Ottoman Empire's onetime supremacy at sea. In the square just beside the museum are the tomb (usually locked) and a statue of Hayreddin Pasha, or "Barbarossa," the famous admiral of the empire's fleet in the Ottoman glory days of the early 16th century.