Mr Sabancı was one of Turkey's wealthiest businessmen. Just how wealthy can be garnered from a visit to his recently opened museum, housed in a fabulous Bosphorus shore villa that was originally built for Egyptian royalty back in the 1920s. Approach up steeply sloped lawns, set with stone treasures on loan from the Archaeology Museum, to view two floors of ceramics and calligraphy, from the grand (vast gilded pronouncements of imperial greatness) to the delicate (intricate notebooks crammed with roses formed out of bouquets of poetry). It's all exceptionally fine stuff, beautifully displayed with informative text in English. A modern two-storey extension in glass, steel and marble holds a collection of 19th and 20th-century Turkish art that unfortunately fails to do justice to its coolly elegant surrounds: the paintings play second fiddle to the panoramic views. To get here, ride the bus until it passes under the second great Bosphorus bridge and then shortly after Rumeli Hisarı alight at the stop beside the pencil-sharp minaret of the Hamidiye Mosque: the villa is 100m further on.
Open 10am-6pm Tue-Fri; 11am-5pm Sat, Sun.
Admission $3. No credit cards.