Istanbul : Sleep
The style revolution that has so recently shaped and inspired Istanbul’s new generation of top restaurants and clubs is only just now beginning to penetrate into the rather staid hotel scene. A rash of boutique and style hotels currently on various drawing boards will pop up over the next few years. Nevertheless, even now there are at least a few excellent options despite the limited choice.A major decision to make is choosing in which area to stay. Istanbul is a large city and can be time-consuming to traverse, so if your visit is short you should pick an appropriately located hotel.Those who wish primarily to immerse themselves in the historical sights will naturally want to stay in the Sultanahmet area. Here there is the usual flood of mediocre, chintzy hotels that exists in any touristy spot and only a few establishments stand out.The Four Seasons, perfectly located between the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet Mosque, and elegantly housed in a former Ottoman prison, is, along with the Çirag?an Palace, one of the city’s two leading luxury hotels. Of course, the luxury comes at a price.The Empress Zoe and the Ibrahim Pas¸a Hotel, both nearby, are smaller, far more modest, but stylish and good value. Meanwhile the Eresin Crown, a smart four-star outfit, has the unique boast of being a museum hotel, exhibiting catalogued items from the Archaeology Museum’s collection, including some fabulous busts and columns.
The hotels of the Pera district of Beyoglu meanwhile offer a good compromise for those who wish to be in the midst of Istanbul’s buzzing bar and restaurant district while remaining only a short taxi ride away from the sights of the old city. Here the excellent and newly opened Ansen Suite Hotel offers sleek surroundings and friendly service but only 10 suites. Just down the road Istanbul’s most famous hotel, the Pera Palace, soldiers on, its Victorian glory increasingly ragged. Practically next door, Marmara Pera, belonging to Turkey’s premier luxury hotel group, has built a new, sleek, medium-sized offering replete with a rather stunning roof pool. Its larger, sister hotel, the Marmara Istanbul, is among the several five-star international hotels that cluster around the expansive wastes of Taksim Square in the north of Beyoglu, catering principally for business trade.
The Çiragan Palace meanwhile sits on the shore of the Bosphorus, a little further up from the Dolmabahçe. A modern block with 310 rooms, built by owners Kempinski hotels, offers every extravagant luxury conceivable, but the real show-stopper is next door.The restored palace built by Sultan Abdülaziz in 1857 houses 12 spectacular suites, vast ballrooms and function rooms. Its central atrium boasts a wonderfully bizarre Egyptian-cum-late-Ottoman colour scheme and the world’s heaviest chandelier (the largest is in the Dolmabahçe).The most expensive suite, which is of course accommodation fit for a sultan and overlooks the Bosphorus, is a snip at US$6,000 a night.
If however splendid isolation is more your thing, you may wish to head to the Asian shore, where the entrepreneurial Doors Group, owners of a slew of fashionable restaurants and nightclubs, have just converted a yali, one of the late-Ottoman wooden mansions that line the Bosphorus, into A’jia, a coolly decorated, 16-room boutique hotel. Similarly the owners of the highly rated Kordon restaurant have converted an old raki distillery into the small, superslick, design boutique hotel, Sumahan on the Water.
The rates range given is the price of a double room in low season to the price of a suite in the high season.
