Pera Palace Hotel

History

“Pera Palace”: the very name inspires visions of Ottoman grandeur, the great European fascination with the East, the immortalisation of Istanbul’s unique culture in Western literature, and the very beginnings of world tourism as we now know it. The interesting part is that all of these associations are, in fact, true. While staying at the Pera Palace, you are part of a living, breathing museum – an unbroken thread between past, present, and future.

When the first Orient Express chugged through the gates of Constantinople in 1889, its regal European passengers were not prepared for the marvels of the world’s only transcontinental city. As it turned out, the city wasn’t ready for them either – which gave train pioneer Georges Nackelmackers the idea of founding Constantinople’s first European-style hotel. This was, of course, the Pera Palace. Now let us imagine what those adventurous travellers would have encountered when they approached this beacon of luxury in the heart of the city’s Pera district, which hosted the foreign embassies and was populated largely by Levantine Christians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews.