Dolmabahçe Palace is located in Besiktas district of Istanbul, right beside the Bosphorus. This location originally was a bay where the Ottoman fleet anchored about 400 years ago and many naval ceremonies happened in this bay at the time. Later on, the coast was filled and it became a garden -therefore named Dolmabahçe that literally means “filled garden”- where the Ottoman Sultans spent time and rested in the 17th century which was then called Hasbahçe.