250-year-old inn in Istanbul to be restored

A 250-year-old inn, located in the Galata neighborhood of Istanbul's Beyoğlu district, which once hosted the headquarter of the Ottoman Bank, will be restored due to a protocol signed between the metropolitan municipality and the Bahçeşehir Uğur Education Foundation.

The St. Pierre Inn will be converted into a cultural and arts center after the restoration.

"I first saw the inn some 13 years ago and did a lot trying the building to remain standing in time," Enver Yücel, the head of the foundation, said at the signing ceremony.

"The new renovation project gives me excitement," he added.

"The archaic St. Pierre Inn, which was home to Turkey's first architectural offices, jean and mustard production facilities, will be home to Bahçeşehir University's conservatory then," the university's website said.

The inn was originally built in 1732 at another location in Beyoğlu as a French trade representative building. André Chénier, known as "the father of French romance poetry," was born in the inn in 1762.

However, after the building was burned down in 1770, with the order of the then French consulate, the Saint Pierre Inn, which stands quarter a millennium, was erected in 1771 in today's Bankalar Caddesi (The Street of Banks).