Country & Town House Magazine

To infinity and beyond....

Hewn from a mountainside with its own organic farm, The Dionysos Estate on the Bozburun Peninsula is a real Turkish delight, says Jeremy Isaac.

Ahmet Senol is no ordinary hotelier. To have the vision and determination to build an 42-room hotel from scratch, half way up a sheer mountain in the middle of nowhere on Turkey's Bozburun Peninsula, one hour north-west of Marmaris, takes some beating. This fact becomes all the more impressive when looking back on the site from the aquamarine waters of Turunc bay – the hotel has been so carefully designed and built that you can hardly even see it from the sea.

The reality is that it took a thousand lorry loads of local rock and 40 masons working constantly over a 19-month period to create the idyllic hillside village that is Dionysos – and not a stick of dynamite was used during the entire process.

Ahmet's delightfully simple explanation for what must have seemed an almost Herculean task, is that he dreamed of a boutique hotel on this beautiful peninsular where guests would have 'no neighbours'.

Certainly you get a feeling that immediately on arrival at Dionysos, you have totally escaped the pace and stress of a busy London life. Perched like an eagle's nest at the top of a ravine which runs down to the blue sheltered bay and beaches below, the hotel is a 10-minute drive or 30 minute walk from the ancient site of Amos. Now a tiny village, Amos was an important town during the Hellenistic period with over 15,000 inhabitants. An altar and inscriptions discovered by George E Bean and dating back to 200 BC can still be seen here.

The feeling of rural tranquility is endorsed by the herds of goats with their clinking bells, the keening of eagles and the obvious traces, though sadly for us not sighting-of rooting wild boar that you can see on the many walking routes from the hotel into the mountains or down the hill to the sea.

Booked through Exclusive Escapes, which have a number of beautiful and hidden away properties in Turkey, Dionysos centres around an infinity pool which provides the perfect frame for the view out over the bay and on to the smoky blue mountains of Fethiye and beyond. 

The pool is flanked by a bar area to one side and the restaurant on the other. Other central facilities include a second restaurant where breakfast is served, a gym, tennis court, spa, boutique and, most usefully, a mini market selling water, beer, milk and most basic groceries all run on an honesty basis.

Dionysos is deliberately and delightfully remote and, as the small cottage we were staying in had its own kitchen, this is a really useful service. The rooms and cottages climb the mountainside above the pool area and run off several step paths in the butterfly infested gardens – guests of a less than robust physical condition should beware that the cottages furthest away are a 300-plus steep step climb from the pool, so it may be worth checking where your cottage is located before booking.

Of a complete diversity of age groups (the hotel has recently accepted children) our fellow guests fell firmly into two camps. Those who after the delicious anglo / Turkish buffet breakfast headed straight to the pool for the rest of the day and those who were eager to take advantage of the adventures and excursions on offer.

We fell into the latter camp within the space of a week we had spent a day shopping in Marmaris with the hotel's excellent PR Annabel, who found us unmatchable bargains on quality fake UGG boots, Mulberry handbags pashminas, as well as hosting a delicious lunch in the harbour looking out over the bay in which Nelson once harboured the entire British fleet.

We spent a day on 'Limon', one of two restored and converted lifeboats owned by the hotel, which was stocked up with a huge ice box full of champagne, beer and cold drinks. We put-putted around the coast, stopping at deserted bays to swim, snorkel and eat the most delicious picnic lunch. Come afternoon, we got to see our first-ever speed boat ice-cream man touting his wares over the waves. Lunch was so good that we had to send him away with regret.

Another day, we walked (with cold beers and a picnic made up by the hotel) through the Badedas – green pine forests along a mountain track to spend an isolated day on a deserted ex-nudist beach.

We also hired a car for the day exploring the breathtaking countryside of the peninsular, passing through villages where life couldn't have changed for 100 years, buying local honey from road-side stands and ending up in the charming harbour of Selimye on the other side of the peninsula where we had one of the best meals of our holiday at Aurora. This beautiful and original waterside restaurant run by the gorgeous Suzanne and her eccentric husband Hussein, was one of the highlights of our holiday and we made a firm mental note to return.

Our final day was spent in the lap of luxury with Ahmet and his wife Rim on the hotel's 50-foot catamaran with a dolphin for momentary company. Other experiences on offer included a trip to Ephesus and an overnight sail to the nearby Greek island of Symi (we needed another week for that, though).

Ahmet is not the sort of man who is going to get complacent now that the hotel is completed. If the food and wine at Dionysos were not already excellent, he now has a 165-hectare organic farm a mile up the hillside, which, when in season, supplies 70 per cent of the hotel's fruit and vegetables. He has also planted a vineyard which he is confident will be producing 10,000 bottles of wine in three years' time.

It's all rather enviable really and we too would quite like to chuck in our London jobs and hew a boutique hotel out of rock, plant our own vineyard and grow our own organic produce... Sadly, that's quite unlikely, so we'll just have to visit Ahmet and share his dream again next summer.

Getting There

Turkey specialist Exclusive Escapes offers The Dionysos Estate on the Bozburun Peninsula including return flights to Dalaman, transfers, bed & breakfast and a day’s cultural excursion. The hotel is open from the end of April to October and offers a choice of rooms, villas and private pool suites.