Over 1500 years ago, a magnificent Byzantine villa, built on the shores of the turquoise Mediterranean Sea, commanded a panoramic view over the Bay of Side and the surrounding sand dunes and forests.
Today, on the same spot, The Beach House Hotel enjoys that same view. The hotel, family owned and run by Ali and Penny Yesilipek, is at the heart of the old town of Side.
Its 20 comfortable rooms overlook the bay and the ruins of that Byzantine villa stand in the hotel gardens. The ancient archways and crumbled walls of the villa form a romantic background for lunch or evening drinks on the hotel’s roof terrace.
The Beach House Hotel has a rich historical association with the arts. Side was ‘discovered’ in the 1960’s and visited by some of the great names of the twentieth century’s artistic movements. Some of the famous people who stayed at the ‘Pamphylia’, as it was known then, are listed below.
- Rudolph Nureyev – probably the most well-known ballet dancer.
- Lord Kinross – wrote the best known biography of Ataturk.
- Ninette de Valois – Irish born founder of the Turkish Ballet and the Royal Ballet. A legend.
- Simone de Beauvoir – feminist writer of “The Second Sex”, and mistress of Jean Paul Sartre.
- Jean Paul Sartre – French existentialist philosopher and dramatist born in 1905.
- Duncan Grant – renowned English painter and member of Bloomsbury set, whose murals adorn the walls of the John Russell Chapel ın Lıncoln Cathedral. His stay at the hotel is mentioned in the book ‘With Duncan Grant in Southern Turkey’ by Paul Roche.
