Paris’te Bir Padişah, İstanbul’da Bir İmparatoriçe is a brilliantly researched poster exhibition in French and Turkish about Sultan Abdülaziz’s visit to Paris in 1867 and Napoleon III’s wife, the Empress Eugénie’s visit to Istanbul in 1869, copiously illustrated with the pages of the journals of the day.
It is the fruit of collaboration between Notre Dame de Sion, the Istanbul academic publisher ISIS and the Institut Français, and it became the starting point for a discussion of the political and cultural significance of the two visits – Abdülaziz’s was the first and last an Ottoman sultan would make to the great capitals of Europe. The first conundrum, how to address is hosts and they him. Victoria’s solution was ‘my Oriental cousin’.
Representatives of the municipality of address the Empress Eugénie as she enters Pera. After M Montani, Le Monde illustré, Nov 6, 1869, p293 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
The joy is in the fascinating details, down to what the the Sultan had for lunch as he passed through Marseilles, as well as the theatricality of the whole thing, which, far from aggrandising the heroes, actually make them rather small and more human! This is the triumphal arch built for the occasion at the entrance to what is today İstiklal Caddesi in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu, then the Grand’ Rue de Pera. Below is the incredible edifice erected at the Hunkar Kasrı in Beykoz.
The parade at Hünkar İskelesi (Beykoz) in the Empress’s honour. After M Montani, Le Monde illustré, Nov 6, 1869, p293 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
We also learn about little known visits by other members of the French imperial family. François d’Orleans, Prince of Joinville, third son of King Louis-Philippe, for example, came as a naval officer in August 1839 on La Belle-Poule during a fractious moment between the Ottomans and Egypt. One of Pera’s many infamous fires broke out when he was there, and the French navy, led by the Prince himself, took part in the rescue efforts, a scene he captured in the painting below, published in his memoirs.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
