The Yard Hotel: A Seven-Room Stay in an 1880s Istanbul Consulate, Built on the Philosophy of Removing the Unnecessary

Yusuf grew up around construction. His family profession was building, and although his father passed away when Yusuf was eighteen, the standards he set had already been absorbed.

“During the short time I spent with him,” Yusuf says, “I learned a lot about what it means to build good buildings.”

He and his brother continued the family work together after their father’s death. Yusuf stayed on the construction side. He liked being on the sites, inside the buildings, watching the work take shape.

“Whatever work I was doing,” he says, “I always tried to do the best possible version of it, without thinking only about commercial profit.”

In 2011 he left it behind for a while. He moved to Italy, lived between Milan and Florence, and started buying and selling luxury goods. From there he began designing handbags in Florence under the name Ada Munari. In 2015, the work was featured in ELLE Magazine.

“It was a beautiful period of my life,” Yusuf says, “but I never wanted to completely leave construction behind.”

He returned to Istanbul in 2016 and went back to building and selling apartments. The work paid, but it began to feel narrow.

“My mind was always focused on creating more unique living spaces,” he says. “The problem was that no matter how much effort or money you invested, every neighborhood had a certain sales limit. I wanted to create better buildings, but it was difficult to receive the true value of the work. I also did not want the things I built to have a short life. This is what pushed me toward restoring historical buildings.”

Yusuf was restoring a historical building for another investor when he came across the place that would become The Yard.

“The building was completely ruined, almost abandoned,” he says, “but it had a very strong character. It was originally built in the 1880s as a consulate guesthouse in Pera. Later, it was abandoned and left in ruins for many years.”

He acquired it at the end of 2021. The project and approval process took roughly fifteen months. Restoration started in the middle of 2023 and was completed in March 2025, with original wooden floors, ceilings, and structural elements preserved alongside the natural stone exterior. From there, Yusuf turned to the interiors: the furniture, the rugs, the lighting, the details inside every one of the seven rooms.

By December 2025, the building was fully ready. Yusuf opened around New Year for a week, as a private test, then closed for about a month to finish the things he was not satisfied with. The Yard officially opened in February 2026, almost four and a half years after the building had first been acquired.

The seven rooms are individually designed, sized between thirty and thirty-four square meters, with three facing the inner courtyard and four facing the street. Several open onto private balconies. Ceilings reach up to 390 centimeters in the most generous rooms, with full-height windows pulling in the Pera light. Interiors are built around natural materials and hand-woven silk and wool rugs. Yusuf runs the hotel with Moises Gallavotti, a friend from his years in Milan, as the on-site manager.

The first thing Yusuf will tell anyone about the place is what it is not.

“We do not come from a hospitality background,” he says. “In fact, we intentionally did not want to create a traditional hotel system. We do not want a place where people constantly feel they are spending money every minute. Water costs money, coffee costs money, snacks cost money. We did not want that kind of atmosphere.”

The decision to remove the reception desk follows from that.

“This is also one of the reasons why we do not have a traditional reception,” Yusuf says. “We do not want people to feel like they are inside a typical hotel. We want guests to feel a sense of belonging, almost as if the entire building is their own home.”

In place of the reception is the kitchen.

“Yes, we sell rooms,” he says, “but after that we want guests to feel at home during their time here. Whatever we have, we try to share in the best way possible. Coffee, tea, water, brunch, cookies, desserts, fruit, depending on the day, whatever we have available, we try to offer the best quality we can. Because we believe a person’s value should never depend on how much money they spend.”

The cooking sometimes goes a step further. Yusuf and Moises occasionally cook with their guests when the moment is right. They are careful never to dress it up as part of the offer.

“We try very carefully to keep it natural and sincere,” Yusuf says, “because people can feel when something is genuine.”

One thing The Yard does, that most hotels do badly, is help guests use the city. Yusuf and Moises will recommend, connect, and book on a guest’s behalf, and they do it with the unguarded specificity of someone who actually eats in these places.

Yusuf organizes his recommendations by time of day. For a midday meal in the local tradesmen style, Nato Lokantası in Karaköy. For traditional Turkish food, he is loyal to Hünkar Lokantası in Nişantaşı. For dinner, Lokanta 1741 in Cağaloğlu. For lahmacun and kebab at almost any hour, Pera Antakya Sofrası, three minutes from the front door in Asmalımescit. For fish, Sait Restaurant at Galataport, or the small fish market restaurants along the waterfront in Karaköy.

The recommendations are part of the same principle that runs the kitchen.

“If a guest is researching a specific topic, we genuinely enjoy trying to connect them with the right people or experts in the city,” Yusuf says. “We do not want The Yard to be only a place to sleep.”

The Yard sets a particular tone, and asks guests to meet it. Yusuf describes the underlying frame as an apartment block of considered neighbors.

“It is important to remember that this is not a completely isolated house,” he says. “Just like in an apartment building, neighbors should respect and think about each other, and we expect the same approach from our guests.”

Hospitality at this scale, as he describes it, is also a particular kind of weight.

“Hospitality is an incredibly difficult profession, but also a very beautiful one,” Yusuf says. “It is not a job where you can relax even for one day. Once a guest enters the building, you feel responsible for their comfort, safety, and well-being. The idea of leaving a guest disappointed is probably the thing that would upset us the most.”

Asked what The Yard has given him in return, he answers without hesitation.

“Through this place, we meet incredible people from all around the world,” Yusuf says. “You become friends with people from completely different cultures, and this gives you a much more positive perspective on life. Honestly, this is something that cannot really be measured with money.”