A favourite of royals seeking luxury, writers looking for the muse and undercover spies, Pera Palace — Istanbul’s hotel of mysteries and pomp — has reopened after a major facelift to revive its past grandeur.
Built in the late 19th century for the passengers of the legendary Orient Express, the 115-room hotel has hosted generations of illustrious guests, from King Edward VIII and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain or the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I, to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock or Greta Garbo.
It was the place where crime writer Agatha Christie crafted “Murder on the Orient Express”, and where Ernest Hemingway is said to have sipped at a whisky, watching the sunlight play on the waters of the Golden Horn.
Istanbul is to get a new seven-star hotel, according to local media reports.
Luxury Shangri-La hotel group signed an agreement April 11 with local developer Tanrıverdi Holdings to build the hotel on the banks of the Bosphorus strait.
The hotel is to be built on the site of an old tobacco factory in the central BeÅŸiktaÅŸ district, Turkish newspaper Zaman reports.
The 200-room hotel is due to open in 2012. It will have seven storeys both above and below sea level and will cost an estimated $250 million to construct.
Istanbul is developing and turning very cosmopolitan at a fast rate. A proof of this is the Istanbul Sapphire which is a 261-meter skyscraper. It will be completed in late 2009 and will then be the tallest residential building in all of Europe.
The skyscraper has been under construction for three years and recently reached full height. There will be 174 private residences divided between 64 floors. The other features of this towering building include a shopping center, fitness center and spa, restaurants and includes vertical gardens and a viewing terrace.
The total cost of the project is currently $200 million and around 40 percent of the whole project has been sold.
Visitors to Istanbul will soon have a chance to view the most spectacular ocean views on the planet. A seven floor, seven-star hotel is being built underwater on what was formerly a tobacco factory.
There will be exhibition halls, and restaurants, and all rooms will be sea facing.This isn’t the first such underwater hotel complex in the world.
That honor goes to the $500 million Poseidon Hotel which is currently being built off Fiji. The Istanbul hotel differs in that it is being built under the city center, which should make for an interesting experience.
