Since the time ofSelim III ( 1 7 6 1 1 8 0 8 ), the European shores of the Bosphorus had become the preferred place of residence for the royal family. During the course of his reign the sultan spent more time in his sister Hatice Sultan's new palace, designed by the German-French architect Antoine Ignace Melling in Beikta, than at the Topkapi Palace. But it was Mahmud II to whom the Topkapi seemed dull and gloomy in comparison to European palaces who abandoned it for a new residence near his barracks and mosque designed in "thoroughly European" fashion (Pardoe 1838: 17). In 1856 the sultans permanently settled at the Dolmabahe Palace on the Bosphorus, built with a gleaming white marble faade articulated by neoclassical columns, rococo, and neo-Renaissance features, which exemplified a modern mixture of styles from diverse periods. That same year, in Cairo Said Pasha (r. 1 8 5 4 1 8 6 3) started building a new palace along the Nile, the Qasr al-Nil, with an overworked faade repl

Abandoning the Cairo Citadel as the premier site of power, prominent members of the dynasty now settled similarly along the Nile's embankment. Khedives, frequenting

1135 1136 Nebahat Avcolu and Mercedes Volait Istanbul with their families, also erected lavish residences along the Bosphorus with which the sultans competed. Built by Garabet Amira Balyan and his son N i g o g os Balyan ( 1 8 4 3 1 8 5 5 )from an Armenian dynasty of O t t o m an royal architects educated in Paris the Dolmabah<;e Palace's eclectic style was in effect a formal and thematic citation of the foreign embassies that the O t t o m an dignitaries had begun visiting with regularity ( G o o d w in 1 9 9 7: 4 1 7 4 2 3 ). T he stylistic and decorative similarity between the new embassies and the sultan's palace was not simply about keeping up. It was an innovative form of self-representation, for eclecticism implied the fluidity of the discourse of power. T he Dolmabah^e's emulation of embassies mirrored a

Following the c o n s t r u c t i on of the palace, the remaining medieval fortifications of Galata were razed in 1 8 64 and the exclusively Muslim fringes of this former Genoese colony became part of the newly created Sixth District (n a h i y e) of Istanbul. T h is strategy was n ot unlike M u h a m m ad 'Ali's use of O t t o m an and European mixed styles in Cairo. D u r i ng his reign ( 1 8 0 5 1 8 4 8 ), the typical