14. Orphanage in Rum
Where: Turkey
Year: 1898
Expense: Over $12 million
On Buyukada, one of Turkey’s Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, stood the enormous wooden structure known as the Prinkipo Palace, or Rum Orphanage. The largest wooden structure in Europe and the second-largest in the world is Rum Orphanage. It has a 65,617 square foot area. Constructed in the late 1800s, it was formally inaugurated as an orphanage in 1903.
Turkey’s Rum Orphanage / Shutterstock ©aydngvn
The Rum Orphanage featured 206 rooms, a kitchen, a school, a library, and other workshops. Situated atop the 656-foot-tall mountain, Isa Tepesi, is where the Orphanage was built. Amid tensions between Greece and Turkey, it closed in 1964. It had fallen into disrepair, and the 1980 fire that destroyed much of the site only made matters worse.
zi ang