In the middle of spring Istanbul looks most colorful at this time, tulips bloom in large parks of the city. A special celebration is dedicated to this colorful and picturesque time of the year. The Istanbul Tulip Festival is a colorful annual event that takes place in the spring. Over the entire festival period, more than 3 million tulip bullbs. About a hundred varieties, are planted in lstanbul parks. The festival is not just planting tulips in iconic places and city parks. Floral patterns change every year. For local park designers
creating flower arrangements in flowerbeds is a real art form.
Dates of Istanbul Tulip Festival in 2023: from 10to 30 April.
For a visit, it is better to choose the first days of the festival, when the largest number of tulips bloom, and their buds are still fresh and tender. It is recommended to visit flower places in the morning on weekdays. On weekends and in the evening, the parks are filled not only with tourists, but also with local residents. During the festival, the main venues are open from 11:00 to 20:00.
Venues
Bulk tulip blooming places with decorated flower beds are located in different parts of the city. The most popular photo spots for tourists and locals who want to see flower carpets in April are in Emirgan and Gulhane parks, as well as on Sultanahmet Square.
Tulips are planted in the following parks in lstanbul:
Goethepe park
forest park zone Yildiz;
Beykoz park;
park on Chamlyk hill
Events
Festival visitors in Emirgan Park are invited to participate
in various thematic events. Photo works dedicated to the
festival are exhibited at the park stands – in chronological
order, photographs from the first years of the event to the
present day are exhibited. At the local fair, you can
buy bullbs and seeds of rare varieties of tulips.
In addition to events and workshops related to flowers.
calligraphy and glass blowing classes are held:
you can make your own Turkish tulip cup 4⁴for drinking tea. On different days, performances of musical and dance groups with national flavor are held in open area.
For numerous visitors, cafes are opened in Emirgan Park
during the festival, where you can buy a snack. Lunch is
offered in buffet style for 25 TL per person. It is also worth
visiting a small tulip museum here – it is open every day
except Monday. Admission to the Tulip Museum is free. The exposition, which tells about the history of the tulip, its role in folklore and art, is small.
History
Many mistakenly consider Holland to be the birthplace
of tulips. But, long before appearing in Europe, tulips
were cultivated in Arab countries. As historians
managed to establish, the very first mention of the tulip bulb was found in the documents of Persia. But it was in Turkey that their mass cultivation began. Local gardeners
competed to bring out the most outlandish flower. This
is how the famous Ottoman tulip turned out. It is a bright
scarlet flower with pointed petals.
Further, the Turks brought tulips to Europe, and the
inhabitants of Holland especially liked the flowers
there. Despite the fact that the Dutch later developed
many new varieties and made tulip fields their calling card,
the same flower is still one of the symbols of Istanbul. The
image of a tulip can be found everywhere: on souvenirs, in
floral ornaments on the walls of mosques, or as decoration
on ceramics.
The history of the Tulip Festival in Istanbul dates back to 2006. The festival was organized as a tribute to the centuries-old labor of cultivating this beautiful flower. For almost 15 years of existence, the Tulip Festival in Istanbul has become one of the visiting cards of the city and a landmark spring event. Over the entire period of the event, gardeners planted more than 100 million
tulip bulbs in local parks. Most of the tulips for the spring
event are grown in Konya, but there are also varieties from
around Istanbul.
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