The Topkapı Palace, the main seat of the Ottoman Empire for more than four centuries was officially declared a museum on April 3, 1924 with the direct order of Mustafa Kemal. Thus, within one year following the declaration of the Republic, the ultimate symbol of the ancien régime–the historic Ottoman palace–was given back to the people as a state museum. This museumification, emphasizing the distinction between the Ottoman and post-Ottoman eras, also declared the modern face of the young Turkish Republic in opposition to the non-modern Ottoman Empire that remained in the past. However, the museumification of the Topkapı Palace started much earlier, during the late Ottoman era. During the course of the 19th century, the palace opened its doors first to the diplomatic envoys, later to distinguished guests, and to European visitors and especially following the Second Constitution the Topkapı Palace became a destination for mass tourism. The palace grounds housing the Archaeological Museum, the Janissary Museum, the Military Museum, and the Imperial Treasury became a major tourist attraction during the late Ottoman era. The museumification of the palace was a manifestation of the modernization and Westernization of the empire. However, the well-choreographed tour of the palace for the Western gaze was a reflection of Ottoman "self-orientalism", which would later be replaced by "self-exoticism" during the Republican era. Following the move of the Ottoman rulers to new and modern palaces on the shores of the Bosphorus, both the abandoned Topkapı Palace and the "Historic Peninsula" was associated with the non-modern and positioned as a representation of the past. During the late-Ottoman and post-Ottoman eras, the divide between the old and the new parts of the city became evident. This paper focuses on the late-Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts and presents how the Topkapı Palace itself, its palatial institutions, and the city have been transformed in response to ideological shifts that took place in all aspects of social, political, and urban life of Istanbul during the 19th and 20th centuries. This paper aims at reading Ottoman and Turkish modernization through the Topkapı Palace and also interpreting the physical and symbolic transformation and museumification of the palace as a statement of modernity. It also deals with the question of different modernities and scrutinizes the distinctions and similarities between Ottoman and post-Ottoman ways of representing and displaying the past.