The stunningly stylish Park Hyatt Istanbul - Maçka Palas, located in the fashionable Nişantaşı district, houses 90 uniquely designed rooms, including 10 elegant suites and 25 residential spa rooms, along with a lounge featuring all-day dining, a grill restaurant and a multi-level terrace with pool and bar.

A writer’s view, by Andrew Finkel

The Park Hyatt is the chain’s flagship in Istanbul and very different in feel from the Grand Hyatt down the road in Taksim where you can imagine the bell boys racing down the grand staircases and the bedrooms have a deliberately arabesque feel. By contrast the Park projects the accomplished air of the roué who knows how to seduce rather than overwhelm. The building, by the Istanbul-born Levantine architect Guilo Mongeri, was originally intended to provide residences for the Italian diplomats in the embassy being built across the way, an arrangement which survives in the presence of an Emporio Armani and Gucci Boutique on the ground floor. It inhabits the very European neighbourhood of Teşvikiye and the rooms aim for that sense of if not early Twentieth Century at least post-war eloquence. Walnut fittings, plaster cornices, rich draperies, comfortable but simply designed furniture all, one feels, would have put the building’s original inhabitants at their ease – as might the use of black and white photos of a vanished Istanbul by the photographer Ara Güler, It is up to the bathrooms to sound the note of excess, with Blaise Mautin designed soaps and ungents. The spa suites have their own Turkish hamam and showers that do everything short of putting a man into space. By contrast, the hotel lobby has a modern “club-room” feel and is in keeping with the current trend that somehow you have walked into someone’s living room rather than a public space. There is a candle-lit terrace to sit out on in the warm weather. Convenient for the business district, the Park is also a good fit for visitors who want to sightsee but not to be surrounded by tourists the whole time or enjoy wandering or dining out near some urban chic.