Library offering books and hotel accomodation

Offering a unique holiday package seen nowhere else in Turkey, a literature teacher has established a library-cum-hotel in the Aegean province of İzmir’s Seferihisar district.

The Akşit Culture House of Thought and Literature offers Turkish and foreign guests the ability to conduct research in a “library-hotel” with a view of the forest, sea and a pool.

Speaking to Anatolia news agency, owner Tevfik Akşit said he returned to Turkey nine years ago after 30 years as a teacher in Austria with his four sons and two trucks full of books.

His library-hotel features 80,000 books in various genres in Turkish, German, English and French, Akşit said.

The four-story building, which is located among mandarin gardens, also has a half-Olympic pool, Akşit said. “We also offer accommodation opportunity for researches in our rooms with forest and sea view.”

Akşit said the library-hotel, which is home to nearly 45,000 German books, also served translators. “Translation and research is a long process. This is why our foreign guests stay here for a few days. They have the chance to stay in the rooms in the upper floor of the library. We can host 20 people at the same time.”

There is no other library in Turkey offering accommodation, Akşit said. “There are unique examples in Europe. We have been inspired especially by the famous Cote d’Azur in France. We conducted a search and found this place. Turkish and foreign researchers who come to the library work until noon and do whatever they can do in a holiday village here, because we offer them a calm working atmosphere in magnificent nature.”

The cost for accommodation in the library for a night is 100 euros, which includes breakfast, library services and participation in seminars, Akşit said.

Akşit said in the last one to two years those who wanted to spend their holidays came to the library, too. “There are people who want to have a calm holiday. Especially families from Germany have visited us. We can also call it cultural tourism.”

The library-hotel had project partnership with Halma, the root institution of translation centers, where literary works are translated in Europe, Akşit said. “As part of the project, we are the only translation center representing Turkey in an international environment.”