The palace looks its most attractive from the Bosphorus, from where its two bathing pavilions, one for the harem (women's only) and the other for the selamlik (men's only), can best be seen.
A nineteenth-century adventure yarn , loosely derived from a poem by Lord Byron , Le Corsaire tells of harems , abductions , pirates , pashas , slave girls , treachery , true love and a shipwreck.