An historic Greek orphanage on Turkey's Princes' Islands will be restored and converted into a luxury five-star hotel. Representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate reached an agreement with Greek and Turkish investment companies to carry out the reconstruction project.
The building is one of the largest wooden structures in Europe and serves as a major landmark of the historical Greek presence in Turkey. Patriarch Bartholomew admitted that approving the commercial hotel transformation was a difficult choice, but noted it was necessary to save the decaying complex from total ruin.
In the early 20th century, hundreds of children from Constantinople's Greek community lived at the site, according to the Daily Mail. The Ecumenical Patriarchate is the primary spiritual center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, based in Istanbul, the Turkish city historically known as Constantinople.
Failed hotel plans and orphanage history
The history of the sprawling timber building began in the late 19th century when it was designed by the Franco-Ottoman architect Alexandre Vallaury. Vallaury was a prominent 19th-century architect known for designing major civic and commercial landmarks across Istanbul.
The property was initially intended to open as a luxury resort called the Prinkipo Palace Hotel, with plans that included an on-site casino. However, authorities refused to grant a casino license, and the original commercial hotel project was never realized.
Following the abandoned hotel venture, the property was purchased by Eleni Zarifi. She transferred the complex to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which repurposed the building as an orphanage for children from the local Greek community. The orphanage operated for six decades from 1903 until its closure in 1964.
Legal ownership battle and restoration agreement
After the orphanage closed in 1964, the vacant structure faced a difficult period of neglect. Over the subsequent decades, the unmaintained wooden construction gradually deteriorated, and parts of the timber structure collapsed over time.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights, an international judicial body based in Strasbourg, France, officially recognized the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the lawful owner of the historic building. However, restoring the massive wooden structure required significant financial resources, and subsequent efforts to find funding were unsuccessful.
Patriarch Bartholomew stated that transforming the building into a hotel was a hard but essential decision to prevent its destruction. Under the new agreement between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek and Turkish investment companies, the historical landmark will undergo complete restoration before reopening as a five-star hotel.
