Nişanyan House Hotel, Şirince
Characterful and cultured Aegean lodgings. Doubles from £80 B&B
The Nişanyan House is actually an assortment of varied lodgings – hotel rooms, self-catering cottages and houses, rooms in a fairy-tale tower house – scattered across Şirince. This lovely Aegean town’s removed location in the hills spared it the serial sackings which levelled so much of this region in the upheavals of the early-twentieth century; handsome late-Ottoman residences, all tiled roofs and weathered timbers, are set among cobbled lanes, olive groves and vineyards.
It’s no surprise, what with proximity of Ephesus, that the town is firmly on the tourist route. Şirince can clog with coach tours for much of the day; the trick is to catch the place outside of hours by overnighting here – preferably in one of the five delightful and thoroughly individual rooms at the Nişanyan ‘Inn’. This is a charming Ottoman country house of innate though informal style, all heirlooms and Ipads, with plenty of lazing space. There’s a shaded terrace where fabulous meals are served, most memorably in the evenings, and wonderful grounds where the lovely cottage accommodation and pool is to be found. The place is a joy, retaining as it does the inimitable spirit of absentee owner Sevan Nişanyan, a celebrated polymath now living in exile in Armenia after famously falling foul of the authorities.
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