Pera Palace, Beyoglu
Istandbul’s grande dame hotel awoke from some much-needed beauty sleep late last year. Rooms are a medley of marble, antique dressers, classic portraits of the city and monogrammed pillowcases. The suites are in a class of their own: some overlook the Bosphorus, while the Agatha Christie suite is where the author supposedly penned Murder on the Orient Express. The hotel has a spa with an indoor jet-streamed swimming pool and Turkish bath.
Tomtom Suites, Beyoglu
As European traders colonised the Golden Horn’s northern shores, they left behind a legacy of grand embassies, churches and bourgeois residences. Tomtom Suites was a French law court annexe in the 1850s; evolving into a Franciscan nunnery; then bank archives. Since 2008 it has been a sumptuous mansion with Carrara marble bathrooms and an Ottoman library. The gardens of the Italian Consulate opposite ensure night-time tranquillity, and the top-floor restaurant overlooks the Bosphorus.
Naya, Buyukada Island
The Princes’ Islands take their name from a grisly exile story: unwanted heirs to the Byzantine throne were blinded and shipped here a millennium ago. For the last few centuries these leafy islands in Istanbul’s bay have been a place of ritzy retreat instead, the wooden mansions welcoming Wallace Simpson, Leon Trotsky and other eloping celebrities. On Buyukada Island, the seven-bedroom villa Naya was given an overhaul in 2010 by its German owner. Expect sparkly suspended trinkets, a plunge pool and a garden with sea view.
Villa Denise, Arnavutkoy
Villa Denise is a 200-year-old yali, one of the pretty wooden houses that line the Bosphorus’s shores. It has five rooms decorated with jewel-toned fabrics. The owner can arrange for guests to be taken on a tour of the city in a classic car from his collection.
W Istanbul, Besiktas
This swanky hotel started life as the dormitories of the nearby Dolmabahce Palace. The building bends around a huge courtyard which most of the chic guestrooms – think goose-down pillows and rainforest showers – overlook.
I’zaz Lofts, Beyoglu
The new face of Istanbul is summed up by I’zaz Lofts, a chic suite-only concept hotel. It’s housed in a bourgeois apartment block next to the old British Embassy, amid a warren of boutiques and hip hotels. Each of the four designer suites boasts fine linen, fresh flowers and a draped-off Ottoman boudoir.
