The Traveller's Daybook by Fergus Fleming

Author:Fergus Fleming [Fleming, Fergus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857899286
Publisher: Atlantic Books

10 JULY

THE PERA PALAS, 1994

In 1994 the Scottish writer William Dalrymple (born 1965) journeyed through the realms of ancient Byzantium in search of the Middle East’s remaining pockets of Christianity. Among his early stops was Istanbul’s legendary Pera Palas hotel.

Arriving here is like stepping into a sensuous Orientalist fantasy by Delacroix, all mock-Iznik tiles and pseudo-Ottoman marble inlay. A hotel masquerading as a Turkish bath; you almost expect some voluptuous Turkish odalisque to appear and disrobe behind the reception desk.

I ate breakfast in a vast Viennese ballroom with a sprung wooden floor and dadoes dripping with recently reapplied gilt. The lift is a giant baroque birdcage, entered through a rainforest of potted palms. On the wall nearby, newly dusted, is a framed diploma from the 1932 Ideal Home Exhibition, signed by the Mayor of East Ham.

The Pera Palas was bought by the Turkish government last year, and attempts to renovate the old structure seem to have started manically, then been abruptly given up. In the dining room the gilt is so bright you have to wear sunglasses to look at it; but upstairs the carpets are as bald as the head of an Ottoman eunuch.

The hotel has a policy of naming its bedrooms after distinguished guests, which has unconsciously acted as a graph of its dramatic post-war decline: from before the war you can choose to sleep in Ataturk, Mata Hari or King Zog of Albania; after it there is nothing more exciting on offer than Julio Iglesias.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.