A $1.4 billion dollar gilt trip on the southern Turkish coast near Antalya, Mardan Palace is the most opulent and ostentatious new hotel of the decade. It opened in 2009.
This 180,000 square meter Xanadu, conceived by vastly wealthy Russian businessman Telman Ismailov and named for his beloved father, radiates new-money kitsch and resembles a Turkish Disneyland for adults. As if a five-acre swimming pool on the Turkish rivera isn't enough, Mardan Palace also has a separate channel around its perimeter around which a motorized gondola travels.
Its columns and arches accented with gold leaf indoors and out, Mardan Palace is loosely designed to evoke the posh Dolmabahce Palace of old Istanbul updated for a modern traveler.
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