Dolmabahçe Palace was the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire and home to six Sultans from 1856 until the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The palace's construction cost the equivalent of 35 tons of gold, with 14 tons used to gild its 45,000 square foot ceilings. After the republic was formed, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk used the palace as the presidential summer residence where he passed some of Turkey's most important laws and spent his final days before dying there in 1938.