Once you cross the Bosphorus Straits from Europe to Asia, one of the first places you can visit is Beylerbeyi Palace. This is where you would slap a French Empress when in Turkey.

I’m joking, but not as much as you may think.

The Palace was built in the 1860s as a summer palace for the Ottoman sultans. Sultan Abdul-Aziz also wanted to use it to entertain visiting heads of state and dignitaries.  The Ottomans used to use the opulent palaces of Dolmabahçe or Küçüksu for this. The Sultan wanted to impress Europeans with the Turks ability to build something European.

And this is one of the first things that strikes you about this palace. The architecture, style and layout is obviously European so you can see what he was trying to do here. (Westernisation was a common theme at the time. It culminated in Ataturk’s modernisation of the country after World War I)

There are Ottoman touches – inside the building you can find fountains inside some of the rooms. The Turks used these to help cool rooms in summer and because the sound of running water is relaxing. I was also curious of the use of Egyptian reed carpets to protect against humidity. (There’s something we could use in Malta!)

One of the first visiting dignitaries was the French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. She stopped in Constantinople on her way to open the Suez Canal in 1869. At the ball hosted in Beylerbeyi Palace, the Empress entered the room on the arm of Sultan Abdul-Aziz. It wasn’t something she’d given much thought. I’m sure a host would have escorted her in anywhere else.

The Sultan’s mother was outraged at this. How dare a woman – a foreign woman! – take her son’s hand in public! The mother marched up to the Empress and slapped her for her insolence. Despite the insult, the French agreed not to raise a diplomatic incident. I can only wonder what they negotiated behind-the-scenes.

History does not record what the Empress thought of the Sultan’s mother.