Istanbul Research Institute Gallery

The Istanbul Research Institute aims to unearth Istanbul’s history, cultural structure and human profile through the Byzantine, Ottoman and Republic periods by following the traces of civilization which spread from the city’s center to its surroundings.  The Institute develops and supports projects that feed this purpose and works to share the results of these efforts through national and international events with related institutions and the public, and through a rich publication series.

The ground floor of the Institute is arranged as a gallery that highlights and supports the projects of the Institute.  The Institute, which started its endeavors concerning Istanbul’s architecture, architects and city planners with the exhibition Ottoman Architect: D’Aronco (1893-1909): Istanbul Projects, continued this work with several other exhibitions. These exhibitions included Wooden Istanbul: Examples from Domestic Architecture; Long Stories: Istanbul in Melling and Dunn’s Panoramas; From Empire’s Capital to Republic’s Modern City: Henri Prost’s Istanbul Planning (1936-1951) and Architect of the Changing Times: Edoardo De Nari (1874-1954). 

Under the theme of “education history”, the Institute has carried out such projects as the Thinking Seed, Talking Ground: Village Institutes of the Republic (1940-1954) and Anatomy of a Tradition: 150 Years of Robert College (1863-2013). Another exhibition, Crescent and the Sun: Three Japanese in Istanbul- Yamada Torajiro, Ito Chuta and Otani Kozui, was the first comprehensive research project that investigated Ottoman-Japan relations through the Japanese people who left their marks on Istanbul. Lastly, the exhibition entitled From the Shores of Nile to Boğaziçi: Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa Dynasty’s Traces in Istanbul uncovered the extraordinary story of the Dynasty of Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa, who was a pioneer in the fields of culture, arts and science, as well as in political history, all the way from Egypt to Istanbul.