Collection of Furniture and Decorative Arts, Sakıp Sabancı Museum

Three rooms on the entry level of the Atlı Köşk mansion are preserved with the furnishings and objects of decorative art of the 18th and 19th centuries that were in use during the period when the Sabancı Family resided there.

The historical building belonged to several high ranked pasha families and khedives, Egyptian governors, from 1848 until 1884, when it was purchased by the Ottoman Treasury on the orders of Sultan Abdülhamid II and presented as a gift to King Nicola I of Montenegro. The mansion served the next 30 years as a royal residence and embassy of Montenegro. In 1913, the Ottoman government repossessed it, which became home to the granddaughter of Sultan Mehmed V Reşad. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Prince Mehmed Ali Hasan, grandson of Khedive İsmail Paşa, purchased the then derelict house and commissioned the architect Edouard de Nari to build the present house. However, it remained unused for many years until the elder sister of the Egyptian prince made it her home in 1944.

In 1951 Hacı Ömer Sabancı, father of Sakıp Sabancı and founder of Sabancı Holding, purchased the mansion for spending summer months with his family. Inside the entrance gate of his mansion, he placed the bronze statue of a horse, he purchased at an auction. The sculpture was designed by Louis-Joseph Daumas in Paris in 1864 and cast by Vor Thiebaut. The house became popularly known as Atlı Köşk (Equestrian Villa). He and his family lived in the mansion until his decease in 1966. The mansion was home to Sakıp Sabancı and family between 1969 and 1999.

The mansion was leased in 1998 for a period of 49 years to Sabancı University along with all the antique furnishings and art collections. Today, the original mansion and a modern gallery annex host extensive art collections of 19th and 20th century.

Sakıp Sabancı Museum

Sabancı University’s Sakıp Sabancı Museum is located in Emirgan, at one of Istanbul’s oldest settlements on the Bosphorus.

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In 1925, Prince Mehmed Ali Hasan of the Hidiv family of Egypt commissioned the Italian architect Edouard De Nari to build the villa, now the museum’s main building, and it was used as a summer house for many years by various members of the Hidiv family.

After the mansion was purchased in 1951 by industrialist Hacı Ömer Sabancı from the Hidiv family as a summer residence, it came to be known as Atlı Köşk, “The Mansion with the Horse”, because of the statue of a horse (purchased in the same year) that was installed in the garden; the statue is the 1864 work of the French sculptor Louis Doumas.

A second horse sculpture on the grounds of Atlı Köşk that gave the mansion its name is the cast of one of the four horses taken from Sultanahmet square in Istanbul when it was looted by Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and removed to the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.

After the death of Hacı Ömer Sabancı in 1966, Atlı Köşk began to be used permanently as a home by Sakıp Sabancı in 1974 as the eldest of the family, and for many years housed Sakıp Sabancı’s rich collection of calligraphy and paintings. In 1998, together with its collection and furnishings, the mansion was bequeathed to Sabancı University by the Sabancı family to be transformed into a museum.

With the annex of a modern gallery, the exhibition areas of the museum opened to visitors in 2002; with a further extension of the layout in 2005, the technical level of the museum reached international standards.

Today Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum presents a versatile museological environment with its rich permanent collection, the comprehensive temporary exhibitions that it hosts, its conservation units, model educational programs and the various concerts, conferences and seminars held there.

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