Gülhane Park in Istanbul once served as the private outer garden of Topkapı Palace, closed to the public for centuries until it opened as a municipal park in 1912. The site carries deep historical weight: it is where the 1839 Edict of Gülhane was proclaimed, launching the Ottoman Empire’s Tanzimat reform era, and later where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced the new Latin alphabet to the Turkish people.
Within the park stands the Column of the Goths, believed to be Istanbul’s oldest surviving monument, dating to the late third century CE. The former Topkapı Palace stables on the park’s western edge now house the Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam, and a restored Byzantine-era cistern has been converted into the Gülhane Sanat art center.
Every April the park transforms for the Istanbul Tulip Festival, when tens of thousands of tulips and roses bloom across its flower beds. Entry is free, and its location beside Topkapı Palace and Sultanahmet makes it a natural stop on any historic-peninsula walking tour.