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Mardan Palace opening

The opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics soared sky-high, and so too did the opening of the Mardan Palace, on the Turkish coast near Antalya.

By: Mary Gostelow

The 600-or-so invited guests, at Mardan Palace, Antalya, for the weekend of May 22-23, 2009, were continually lifted off this planet, so to speak.

Near-septuagenarian Tom Jones had the enthusiasm of a month-old puppy, champion of course, as he sang and sang, and later saw in the dawn at one of the amazing hotel's 17 bars. And the equally-ageless Seal compèred at the first night's party - a co-emcee performance with that veteran hotel opener Sharon Stone - and, the following night, he was the champion performer.

When Sharon Stone alighted from a Maybach and tripped along the red carpet in her black Roberto Cavelli to enter the glittering hotel, she gazed up at its golden and crystal lobby and said, in awe and as if she had only just seen it, that she had never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. In fact she was staying there and had exited via a back door to be driven around to the front for that formal opening, but that is showbiz for you. In fact, too, it was only six weeks ago when she had helped open another extraordinary hotel, One&Only Cape Town. And the previous night, on May 21st, 2009, she had been at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden Roc in Antibes, France - but that was a charity event.

Sharon Stone had been co-chairing the annual Cannes Film Festival Foundation for AIDS Research dinner, www.amfar.org. Accompanied by her co-chairs Donatella Versace, Harvey Weinstein and Michelle Yeoh, and such supporters as Lily Cole, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Paris Hilton and Claudia Schiffer, she heard former President Clinton stress the collective responsibilities human beings have toward one another. The following day she flew to Antalya, to make her first visit to Turkey.

She was one of the 600 guests of Moscow-based real-estate entrepreneur, Telman Ismailov, President of the Russian group AST, who was opening the first hotel he has built, the Mardan Palace (he actually co-owns a little - well just over a thousand bedroom - veteran hotel in Moscow). The party, co-hosted by his sons Alekper and Sarkhan, went on all weekend, but the highlight was the gala dinner on Saturday May 23rd, 2009, which would have been the 103rd birthday of Ismailov's father, Mardan Ismailov, after whom the palace is named. Mardan Ismailov, a Juhuro who came from a small, isolated Jewish community that has lived in Azerbaijan for 1,500 years, was born in 1906 and he had 12 kids, all of whom have done great things: sadly he died in 2001, before the birth of Telman Ismailov's first grandson, Tellman Jr.

On that Saturday evening, hotel General Manager Cumhur Ozen, who has Kempinski pedigree, stood at one end of the long red carpet outside the resort's impressive entrance. A fleet of Maybachs, some with police escorts, ferried up VIPs. The Russian contingent included the Mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, and his wife, the building tycoon Elena Baturina, and entertainer Valdish Pelsh - President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, sadly, were otherwise engaged with the Russia-EU summit as far away as possible in Khabarovsk, Siberia (nine hours' time difference from Moscow, and thus ten from Antalya). Anyway, there were Turkey's President, Abdullah Gul; the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Culture and Tourism Minister, Ertugrul Gunay, and there were the Presidents of most of the 'Stan CIS nations and Antarctic adventurer Ben Fogle. The hordes of photographers, from Turkey, Germany, Russia and the UK, shot endlessly at Ms Stone, who looked pretty good ('for the first half of your life you get the face you were born with, and the second half of your life you get the face you deserve', she had said to us a few hours before ).

Monica Bellucci was in figure-hugging nude silk dress and walked the carpet with Telman Ismailov's grandson. Then there was Tom Jones - also known as Sir Thomas Jones Woodward OBE. He was followed by Richard Gere, with wife Carey Lowell, both of whom were dressed discreetly and you really felt they were there through genuine commitment rather than a big ring or a hefty donation to their own pension funds. Richard Gere said, more than once, that at a private dinner the previous night Telman Ismailov had made a considerable donation to The Gere Foundation, which alleviates suffering in Tibet. By contrast Seal - real name Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel - had left his heavily pregnant wife, supermodel Heidi Klum, at home. We particularly liked the way that as he wafted along the carpet he talked the walk of his admiration for what the hotel is doing to generate jobs and the economy of the area. And then, having waited for far longer than politeness decreed, we actually left before Mariah Carey arrived: her publicist had been onsite for a good 90 minutes, constantly saying she was on her way, but eventually we succumbed, like many others, and went inside for a glass of Dom Pérignon before we could see Mariah in her Roberto Cavalli and new finger-rock, an extra gift from the Ismailov family (one wonders if she had kept Nelson Mandela waiting when she, like Sharon Stone, had been in the Cape Town shindig). Later, she did sing, but unlike Tom Jones she was not able to engage the audience.

The best performer on that red carpet had undoubtedly been Paris Hilton, whose baggage had apparently not made it from Cannes. She had borrowed an exquisite little fuchsia number with flowing full-length overskirt from a Turkish designer whose name should be banged out worldwide (all we know for now is A Nonymous). Anyway, the self-appointed and self-made Brand that is Hilton danced with the dress as though in a ballet. As she got out of her Maybach, she flirtily checked her makeup in its wing-mirror, and winked at the photographers. What did she think of the hotel? Love it. What did she think of Turkey? Love it. Actually, come to think of it we hardly saw her after that red carpet performance. We wondered if she made it to the party but she did manage to get onstage and say hello everyone (one of my new friends had just seen her, titivating her china-doll make up, in the ladies' room, and said how nervous she appeared, but hours later she was spied in an elevator with her boyfriend, Baltimore Orioles baseball star Doug Reinhardt, anything but nervous but still anything but vertically composed).

Dinner was on a gold-colored stage built out over what could be the world's largest swimming pool, 971 feet long, so that a thousand can swim at any one time. It is straddled by a magnificent wood bridge, named for Leonardo Da Vinci, whose original design Telman Ismailov apparently copied. The pool is cradled by the C-shaped Turkish themed hotel, which acts as arms around three sides - the opening leads straight to gardens and beach. Around the pool, by the way, is an outer river-way, about 12 feet wide and straddled by smaller bridges, that you could possibly swim around, too.

Let's continue with the party. 60 circular tables had gold central carousels rising to a football-sized ball of golden blossom. The carousels had about 30 arms, at various heights, with twirled with dishes of appetizers, including a total of 45 kg of Caspian Beluga caviar, which works out at 26.4 ounces per table of ten. Culinary Director Jean-Paul Naquin - previously at Raffles, Singapore, and Burj al-Arab, Dubai - had devised and overseen a menu that preceded on to Stuffed quail and forest mushrooms; Diver scallops with sea asparagus; Atlantic lobster au champagne; Beef Wellington with foie gras and black truffle jus - and then the carousel was refilled, with the most magnificent desserts. Wines, most liberally poured, were Chablis GC Vaudésir 2003 and Ch Mouton-Rothschild 2004.

There was obviously ribbon cutting, the scarlet ribbon held by women in traditional Anatolian dress. And then Sharon Stone and Seal took the stage to co-emcee the entertainment. Richard Gere made a little speech about his Foundation, Seal sang one number, Mariah Carey tried to connect with the audience. She is a favorite of Telman Ismailov - he flew her in, with Ricky Martin and Robbie Williams, to sing at his New Year's Eve bash December 21st, 2008, at Moscow's Baltschug Kempinski Hotel (he had had Jennifer Lopez at his 50th birthday in 2006). The real rave of the live acts tonight, however, was Tom Jones. His voice, with the 12-strong backing for the whole production, was magnificent. At the end half the guests were rocking with him, urging him to go on for ever.

But there was so much else to see and watch. There were fireworks and laser shows that reverberated round and round the hotel's exterior and the sky, and then, to everyone's amazement, the same overhead aerial dancers that opened the 2008 Beijing Olympics. No, we had not seen their overhead wires, from one C-arm to another, and neither had we seen the preparation for the water ballet, in which ballerinas in individual six-foot-diameter see-through balloons were propelled across the pool by hidden divers. It went on - and on. By the morning, as some of the guests were trying to find their way back to the appropriate bedrooms, the overhead wires had been taken down and the water-ballet balloons removed, but the 35-strong posse of Belgian party planners and production team continued to be hectically busy for yet another round of events.

Yes, the following night Telman Ismailov was personally hosting a beach barbeque, at another specially-constructed stage and dance floor beyond that main pool, just by the beach. This time there was yet more Beluga, a staggering multi-course barbecue from a purpose-built 18-foot grill, and a cake for the host and a considerably inappropriate fluttering of hundred-dollar bills. Seal belted, as did the shoulder-haired Philippe Kirkorov, and Ms Stone - by now in a nude-colored outfit - rocked and raved, and many stayed with it the whole night, making the most of Telman Ismailov's hospitality. It was rumored this weekend had cost him millions and millions, but, whatever, that is trivial compared to the publicly-stated $1.4 billion stated cost of the entire Mardan Palace hotel.

Yes, Telman Ismailov had been asked why he, a Muscovite, was doing a Turkish-themed hotel? The answer he gives is really - why not? And frankly if a Turkish company (World of Wonders) can build a plausible brick-built Kremlin Palace Hotel half a mile from the Mardan Palace, surely it is logical for him to do a Turkish-themed resort?

The hotel is on seven floors, with the sweeping driveway taking you up to the main entrance on level two (third floor, in US terms). You go straight into a six floor-high lobby, themed for the Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul, built 1843-1856 by Armenian architect Garabet Balyan for Sultan Abdülmecid I, the 31st Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Balyan's design and décor deliberately reflected the increasing influence of European cultural standards on Ottoman culture at that time, with Neo-Classic, Baroque, Rococo and Ottoman styles all blended together to glittering opulence and grandeur. Accordingly, the Mardan Palace's lobby soars up past oval balconies set with glittering falling candelabra to a stained glass ceiling. There so much gold leaf throughout the entire hotel - a total of 107,630 sq feet in all - that you wonder the world could produce that much, or that the Carrera marble quarries could yield the 247,560 sq ft forming columns and floors. Someone has also counted the 500,000 crystals required...

The Dolmabahce wing has 88 bedrooms. As you enter, the C-arm to your right, the European Wing, has 203 post-modernist rooms. The C-arm on your left is the Anatolian Wing, with 225 Turkish-decorated rooms. We stayed in 5034, in the Anatolian Wing. The room was extremely comfortable, wood or marble floors, sand or soft blackberry walls, a magnificent cream velvet headboard and ceiling panel, Hermès toiletries, excellent free wireless WiFi, a shaded balcony big enough for dining for two. There are also, behind the hotel, 11 two-floor houses each holding a total of 44 garden suites.

As if proudly ready for lots of business, Mardan Palace has 17 bars, including the Monkey Bar, which sadly features those animals in cages. This is for the late-night party-goers, who can then proceed - if they have not been able to get a bedroom - directly on to the all-day bars, say the lovely cruise-like open-air bar under a great white canvas sail. There are also restaurants, including a Mediterranean-themed La Cucina, which has Hermès crockery said to be worth $2 million. The gigantic spa, which has the biggest indoor pool we have ever used for laps, comes with a well-stocked gym and a private treatment area that you have to book in entirety. For your money, you get a velvety bedroom with a four-poster (but you cannot stay overnight as the spa closes at 9 pm), two treatment rooms, a dining table for twelve, a private pool and more of that gold leaf - and multi-colored décor that has a passing resemblance to the Burj al-Arab spa.

There is so much to do here. Already three years' work has resulted in the gigantic seawater outdoor aquarium with man-made coral that allows you to swim, accompanied, with some of the 20 varieties of fish, including a smooth hound shark and eagle rays, that Activities Director Brian Cinquegrani oversees - if you do not want to swim with these lovelies, you can look out at them through the underwater windows of the suitably-named Aquamarine restaurant. You have three tennis courts, a zoo, and a beach that is smooth white, thanks to half the sand of Egypt transported, one presumes, by a fleet of ships. The amphitheater seats 900. On the to-do list are the completion of nine football fields, one with seating for 8,000, another seating only 1,500, which of course much pleases the local community as Antalya-ites are charming, and absolutely football crazy. Oh yes, the land the other side of the road outside the resort will be a Jack Nicklaus golf course.

You can only marvel. Back outside the entrance, the red carpet has gone and the Maybachs have been replaced by a single Rolls-Royce and several royal blue golf buggies. But you are still amazed as you look down, past 73 wide stone steps flanking eight tiers of water features holding a Bellagio-type water ballet, and at each tier a garden so magnificently tended you think every gardener in town is employed here full-time. Yes, Telman Ismailov, you are certainly motivating the area to action, and you are encouraging your Russia-CIS oligarch friends to forsake Courchevel and St Moritz for Antalya. We genuinely wish you all the good luck in the world.

Mardan Palace, Antalya, Turkey
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