History, Along With Books, at an Istanbul Library

Istanbul may be filled with bookshops, but public libraries are another matter. Most of the city’s libraries belong either to academic or private institutions and are, for the most part, off limits to the public.

This being the case, the opening of any new public library is a cause for celebration. But the new home of library of the Istanbul-based Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, or IRCICA (Yildiz Sarayi, Seyir Kosku, Barbaros Bulvari, Besiktas; 90-212-259-1742; www.ircica.org), is something special, located inside the historic and elegant armory of the Yildiz Palace, built in the late 19th century by Sultan Abdulhamid II.

Unused for decades, the armory and its beautiful frescoed ceilings –- which feature pictures of Ottoman warships and the Sultans’ coat of arms -– have been restored to their former glory, the vast space now home to the library’s 70,000 volumes, some of them rare editions, that are on open shelves and available to the public. (The palace complex, less visited than some of Istanbul’s other Ottoman monuments, is also home to the Municipal Museum of Istanbul and is a very nice place to walk around, with gardens and views of the Bosphorus.)