Pera Palace Hotel

The Pera Palace was built in 1892 by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits to lodge passengers stepping off the Orient Express, and its guest book became a chronicle of the age: Agatha Christie, whose association with room 411 feeds the legend of Murder on the Orient Express; Ernest Hemingway; Greta Garbo; and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose favoured room 101 is preserved as a museum. Designed by Alexandre Vallaury in a blend of neoclassical, Art Nouveau and Oriental styles, it also housed one of Europe's earliest electric lifts, still a celebrated fixture.

A meticulous restoration returned the hotel to its Belle Époque splendour—the domed Kubbeli Saloon glowing again beneath its skylights—while rooms took on a polished period elegance of brass beds, marble baths and views over the Golden Horn from the best categories. The Pera district around it, once the embassy quarter of Constantinople, is now Beyoğlu's arts-and-cafés heartland, with the Galata Tower and Istiklal Avenue in walking reach.

Afternoon tea in the Kubbeli Saloon is an Istanbul institution, the Orient Bar trades gracefully on its literary ghosts, and the Agatha restaurant nods to the route of the great train in its menus. A small spa with a hammam completes the historic house. For travellers drawn to Istanbul's cosmopolitan past, no address is more evocative.