“Barbarous Magnificence in Glass Cases”: The Imperial Treasury and Ottoman Self-Display at the Topkapı Palace

Abstract

The Topkapı Palace and its treasures had long been a point of curiosity for Europeans, and when the doors of the Imperial Treasury finally opened for them in the mid-nineteenth century, the visitors—charged with Orientalist preconceptions—oscillate between admiration and disappointment. Capitalizing on the expertise they had gained in representing their artistic and cultural identity in world’s fairs, museums, and exhibitions, the Ottomans developed certain strategies for displaying their imperial heritage in the Topkapı Palace. During the reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), both the procedure for accessing the palace grounds and the tours became standardized, yet a sense of imperial privilege and exclusivity was deliberately maintained. During these choreographed tours, certain “self-Orientalizing” spectacles that mimicked the traditional palace ceremonies were performed for the foreign gaze. Yet the display of the treasury is more than simply a space curated for touristic purposes; the collection bears historic continuities and dynastic references that have been perpetuated as symbols of imperial legitimacy for centuries. Visual and textual sources of the period attest that the display strategies of the Imperial Treasury emphasized the authenticity of the collection and the venerableness of the dynasty by appropriating the Orientalist visual vocabulary.