Architecture & architectural decoration

The Dutch communities who lived in the Ottoman Empire often built their own houses. The best known of these are the houses and summer houses of the Dutch Levantine families in Izmir and the surrounding villages (Bornova, Seydiköy/Gaziemir, Buca, Hacılar). Most/all of these houses are lost, but drawings and photographs exist. The Dutch community in Izmir also had its own hospital-church complex, and both the church as well as the cemetery still exists. An important building for the Dutch community in Istanbul is the present consulate-general complex (formerly the embassy) which also houses a church. Since the community in Istanbul did not have its own cemetery, members of the Dutch community in Istanbul were often buried in one of the (protestant) cemeteries of Feriköy. In Istanbul there is also a famous building which was commissioned by a Dutchman: the Botter Apartmanı on Istiklal Caddesi. This building in art nouveau style was designed by Raimondo d’Aronco for the Dutch tailor of Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1900.

“The Turk”’ is also used in the decoration of architecture in the Netherlands. A number of buildings in the Netherlands have sculpted depictions of Ottomans (heads of Ottomans: “The Turkish Head”). One example of such a building is the monumental house “In den vergulden Turk" (“In the Gilded Turk”)(1673) in Leiden.