Selimiye Barracks

Security is stiff at the First Army Command Post headquarters, so a visit to the building's main attraction, the Florence Nightingale Museum, won't be easy. The museum is located in the North Tower (although no one is certain which of the two towers actually housed her rooms) and commemorates the aid and comfort she and her nurses gave, in the face of demoralizing mortality rates, to the wounded and dying British soldiers of the Crimean War. The building itself is unremarkable although it has a strong presence -- an elongated rectangle punctuated with two towers. It was constructed by Mahmut II to house the new troops he intended to take the place of the overly dominant and rebellious Janissary Corps. Adjacent to the barracks is a small mosque built by Selim III (an earlier wooden barracks preceded the one that Mahmut II built).

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