Ladies' Outing at Hünkâr İskelesi along the Bosporus

In summer, wealthy families escaped the hot, humid city for the cooler shores of the Bosphorus, and for the women of those families such outings were almost the only amusement they had outside their homes. This party has come to Hünkâr İskelesi on the Asian shore, a name that means the Sultan's Landing.

The museum thinks the women probably belong to the sultan's own household. A black eunuch stands guard, there to keep out uninvited guests, which meant men. About a century later, in 1833, the Ottoman Empire and Russia signed a defensive treaty that took its name from this landing place.