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Istanbul

'Oasis of Istanbul': Pera Palace Hotel turns 125

While Turkish politics and traffic rattle along outside, the Pera maintains a quiet and unruffled equanimity, what General Manager Pinar Timer calls “the Oasis of Istanbul.”

Oren Dorell
USA TODAY
At the Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah in Istanbul, English tea was served daily with chocolates, fruit and flowers in the extreme Orientalist-styled Kubbeli Salon.

ISTANBUL – The hotel made famous in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is celebrating is 125th anniversary and, with Turkish tourism in the dumps, this luxurious gem now happens to be a bargain.

The Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah, which counted a list of famous authors and other luminaries among its guests, reopened after a major renovation in 2010. The refurbishing transformed servant quarters into guest rooms, installed sound-proof windows, and created a new spa and restaurant. But the hotel maintained the original look and all of the old-world glamor of the past, and room rates now start at around $101.

Whether visitors come to stay, dine, or just to enjoy English tea time or a drink at the Orient Bar, the palace provides an escape and sensory feast in a city that is rich with exotic visual and olfactory stimuli.

The Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah has suites decked out to celebrate some of its famous guests, and a museum to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, who also stayed at the Pera. The Agatha Christie suite has a typewriter from her era and a library of the crime novelist’s work.

The hotel was built in 1892 for European travelers on the Orient Express, the train line that connected Paris and what was then Constantinople (now Istanbul). The building was the first public building in Istanbul with electricity, and the first with an elevator. It now has all the modern features travelers would expect, but some throwbacks remain, such as the dome skylights in the Kubbeli Salon, which still open to the outside to provide ventilation.

During a recent visit, Turkish politics and city traffic rattled along outside, but the Pera maintained a quiet and unruffled equanimity, what General Manager Pinar Timer called “the Oasis of Istanbul.”

The Patisserie de Pera served French pastries that resembled tiny sculptures festooned with jewels, while in the extreme Orientalist-styled Kubbeli Salon, English tea was served daily with chocolates, fruit and flowers.

The hotel has suites decked out to celebrate some of its famous guests, and a museum to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, who also stayed at the Pera. The Agatha Christie suite has a typewriter from her era and a library of the crime novelist’s work. The Ernest Hemingway room is designed in the colors blue and tobacco, to celebrate the ocean and cigars that he loved.

Other authors who drank at the famous Orient Bar, or sat in the library, and were served from the same silver dishes still used today include Ian Fleming, Umberto Ecco and Graham Greene, whose characters Henry Pulling and his aunt Augusta Bertram stayed at the Pera in the novel Travels With My Aunt.

To mark the anniversary at the hotel, Timer commissioned a theater to produce plays that were performed in the hotel rooms — they sold out and are now being translated to English — and a series of classical music and jazz concerts that are ongoing. And one of the ballrooms, she created a special time-bending mouth-tantalizing treat.

Pastries for sale at the Patisserie de Pera in the Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah.

“When you come to the Pera Palace you not only come here, you travel back in time,” Timer said as she opened the door to a rococo room decorated with golden plaster wreaths and pink, blue and green roses. “For the 125th anniversary I wanted to do something gastronomic, so this is our pop-up restaurant.”

Some pop-up. The five-course prix fix dinner includes Chicken liver parfait with dry cured duck breast, wild mushrooms and shrimp puff pastry, a citrus sorbet palate cleanser and beef bourguignon followed by chocolate soufflé. Ladies often attend in period clothing suitable for the jazz age, when the hotel was at its early prime, Timer said.

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