“I have been lucky enough to travel the world, but when I got here, by chance I might add, I stopped and said, 'I want to buy a Mansion!' In fact now that I remember, it wasn't the Turkish friends that I was working with at the time that told me about 'The Princes Islands', It was an Arab traveller that I had met out there from Dubai, he said ‘you have a week here, go to the Islands’…'It's another world'.”
Lawrence Jacomelli, Owner of The Karamanyan
Lawrence was working on a film shoot in Istanbul a couple of years ago, when he fell in love with the – then fairly dilapidated – wooden Ottoman mansion. He and his partner, Victoria, otherwise known as fashion designer, Hinks Taylor, spent most of 2008 lovingly renovating the mansion and turning it into four beautiful apartments. She kept all of the original detail of the house whilst introducing contemporary elements of design and decor to make the apartments both stunningly beautiful and comfortable at the same time.
This beautiful old timber building is one of the tallest on the island, standing at some 60 foot. It was built in 1875 as the 'Grand Bretagne Hotel'. Later the original hotel changed ownership a number of times, before passing to mining industrialist and banker brothers Aram, Hrant and Artin Karamanyan. From 1928, when the hotel passed to their heirs, it was named the Karamanyan Hotel. In 1983 the house was split into two – separating the right side from the left. Although the two sides appear symmetrical, in fact this restored side is much larger. By the time Lawrence Jacomelli spotted the house in 2008 it was in a very poor state of repair, but now has been restored to its former glory.
