This slightly old-fashioned hotel has one major advantage, an almost unrivalled location on the doorstep of Sultanahmet's cultural attractions...
Telephone: +90 (0) 212 513 3660
Url: www.ayasofyapensions.com
Price: from 70 EUR to 170 EUR
There are few hotels in the world that can boast of having three world-class cultural attractions on their doorstep. Most of those that can are in Sultanhamet and the Ayasofya Konaklari (Ayasofya Mansions) is one of them.
On an old cobbled lane next door to the Topkapi, right behind the Hagia Sophia and a small, weak child’s stone throw from the Blue Mosque, its location is hard to better.
Built in the 1980s by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Association, the Ayasofya Konaklari (until recently the Ayasofya Pansiyonlari – ‘mansions’ replacing ‘pensions’) was the first Ottoman boutique hotel.
Unusually it is a row of pretty, pastel-coloured houses, with a total of 57 rooms and seven suites, built to exactly mimic the old Ottoman houses that once stood in their place.
A separate building in pretty surroundings at the end of the street houses a restaurant and bar. The downsides are the tired, Ottoman-cum-19th-century-European chintzy décor (though renovations are underway) and the few mod cons.
