Ayasofya Konaklari Hotel Istanbul

General Information

The Ottoman shop hotel trend in Turkey began with the construction of the Ayasofya Konaklari (previously named and famous as Pansiyonlari) by the Turkish Touring & Automobile Association in the 1980s, as ideal copies of the Ottoman mansions that once lined the narrow cobbled lane since seventeenth centuty.

Ayasofya Konaklari is a neat row of pastel-coloured clapboard-clad houses, richly furnished in Ottoman fashion and nicely lamp-lit at night. The range of pension-style, comfortable decorated rooms saw a veritable stampede of illustrious customers including Bernardo Bertolucci, Roman Polanski, Sam Neil, Hillary Swank & Chad Lowe (in May 2005), Bo Derek (in August 2005 and August 2007), Ursula Andress (in August 2005), the Queen of Spain Sophia and her cousin Prince of Greece (in May 2000) and Ethan Coen (in June 2009).

Sogukcesme Street is squeezed between the old stone walls of Topkapi Palace and the rear of Ayasofya. The region also encompasses outdoor park and varanda cafes, and an expansive park that surrounds a great orangerie where open smorgasbord is catered to all of the inn customers.

Two Restaurants + two Cafeterias:

Konuk Evi Garden Restaurant: Serves up to two hundred persons in sitting order, All of the guesthouse clients are having breakfast in greenish cottage of this park.

Sarnic Restaurant: Just beside Ayasofya, in Istanbul, you are to find a Roman cistern as antique as Ayasofya itself. This unusual building aged 1600 years, with its massive stone columns and its lofty brick domes, stands at the head of a row of guesthouse forming the narrow “Sogukcesme” Street between Topkapi Palace walls and Hagia Sophia. This one of its kind Restaurant is now serving fresh samples from Turkish and World courses.