By Maureen O’Hare, CNN
Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — If you dreamed of holding one of history’s most seismic New Year parties, one capable of ripping through six centuries of time and uniting the chronology of a whole country at the stroke of midnight, you’d choose a ballroom like this.
When the Champagne popped in this room on December 31, 1925, Turkey officially abolished the Rumi calendar, which was pinned to the year 1341, and instantly woke up in the Western Gregorian year of 1926. It was a literal 585-year chronological leap, executed overnight.
To pull off such a feat, you need a worthy venue. The Grand Pera Ballroom in the Pera Palace Hotel exactly fits the bill: a gleaming line of crystal chandeliers suspended from Belle Époque-style gold-leaf ceiling medallions, gilded cornices, floral moldings, ivory woodwork and floor-to-ceiling curtains with enough sumptuous fabric to make a dozen ballgowns.
Built in 1892 to host passengers arriving in Istanbul on the Orient Express long-distance train service, the hotel was a place of pioneering luxury. It was the first establishment in Istanbul to provide electricity and hot water outside of the Ottoman palaces, and it was home to the second electric elevator in Europe (the first being in the Eiffel Tower.)
By the time it hosted Turkey’s first-ever Western New Year’s Eve party to ring in that gigantic chronological jump, the hotel was, in a city famously described as the meeting point between east and west, the global crossroads within a global crossroads.
While the six-story Neoclassical landmark on a hillside in the lively Beyoğlu district, overlooking the natural harbor of the Golden Horn has seen its clientele change over the years, its original sumptuous design by architect Alexander Vallaury has been well preserved by its two renovations in 2010 and 2014.
In Beyoğlu, the narrow streets are jammed with cars and yellow taxis, revelers spill out onto the hillside steps from busy bars, and vintage red trams move through the throng of pedestrians day and night on nearby İstiklal Avenue.
However, past the uniformed doormen and through the Pera Palace’s revolving door lies an opulent Art Nouveau time capsule with Ottoman accents. The marble walls and columns impress with grandeur, but the red velvet furnishings and soft light from the chandeliers are soft and welcoming. The guests, mostly older Americans and Europeans, flit between the patisserie, the lounge and the Orient Bar.
Greta Garbo and Jackie O
The hotel’s history is inextricably bound to the birth of the modern Turkish nation under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, also known as Atatürk, or “Father of the Turks.” It’s also welcomed 20th-century icons from cinema, literature and politics.
“This is the elevator that our founding father Mustafa Kemal has used, Agatha Christie has used, Alfred Hitchcock has used,” says Ezgi Pek, the hotel’s marketing coordinator, as the surprisingly spacious dark-wood elevator trundles up through the building’s six floors. A red velvet banquette lines the rear, so that VIPs of yore need not endure one minute without seated luxury.
The roll call of celebrated guests is long. There are pink-curtained rooms dedicated to Greta Garbo and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and suites in honor of dancer-spy Mata Hari and writers Ernest Hemingway and Pierre Loti. The cinematic Hitchcock suite has silver curtains and bedding while Christie’s Room 411 has a replica of her typewriter. The English mystery writer is rumored to have written her 1934 novel “Murder on the Orient Express” during a stay here, but the hotel had already been at the center of plenty of real-life drama.
The early 20th century was a time of unprecedented turmoil across the continents of Europe and Asia. In the 40 or so short years since the hotel’s official ope