Beylerbeyi Palace to serve as boutique hotel in Kars
KARS - Anadolu Agency
The four-and-a-half century-old Beylerbeyi Palace in the eastern province of Kars is being restored to open as a boutique hotel in 2018, Kars Governor Rahmi Doğan said.
“Our province has a serious amount of cultural assets and we want to bring these historical and cultural buildings to the forefront.
Beylerbeyi Palace has been planned [for restoration] as a boutique hotel. The palace has two walls that are about to collapse. We have started work on them to save them immediately. These two walls will be ready by the end of this year. The work continues. From now on, the palace will operate [as a hotel] for Kars,” said Doğan.
In order to make the palace more visible after the restorations, the buildings in front of it have been taken down.
“There was a school and a dormitory in front of the school. We have made the palace visible by taking down these buildings. We prepared the palace’s restoration project and after receiving approval from the conservation board, we made a tender for it,” he said.
The restoration project was planned in collaboration with the Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan, said Doğan. The excavations will be cleared within this year and are planned to be completed and open for tourism next year.
Beylerbeyi Palace was built in 1579 by Lala Mustafa Paşa, who was an Ottoman Army Commander. It was damaged during the Russo-Turkish War in 1828
