“If the Earth was a single state, Istanbul would be its capital,” Napoleon said, likely (and aptly) referring to the ancient city’s firmly rooted place as a crossroads and a bridge between East and West, never entirely claiming either side as a parent. It has been home to Islam, Christianity and Judaism; to Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Persians, Levantines, Italians and Kurds; and emperors, generals, sultans and refugees.

In this centenary year of the Great War, as scholars and armchair historians ruminate around the table on what made “the modern world,” historian and Georgetown University professor Charles King’s new book arrives as a welcome guest. “Midnight at the Pera Palace” is an engaging, detailed look at the old city that became the newest of them all in the interwar years. King uses the colorful history of the real hotel of the title to illustrate the rise of the Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

Built in 1892, The Pera Palace was designed to offer adventurous foreigners luxurious lodging, a place with “elevator, bathrooms, showers, radiator heat and electric lighting,” according to a top guidebook of the day. The Pera was an emblem of the city, and later, the country’s, transformation.

Spies found the hotel to be a comfortable hangout, and a sign “reportedly requested government agents to yield seats in the lounge to paying guests.”

Intertwined with the colorful guest list of the Pera is an even more riveting roster of Istanbullus: A Gallipoli survivor named Mustafa Kemal, disdained by the Allied Powers but later known to the world as Ataturk, the visionary leader and first president of Turkey; the extremely reluctant Leon Trotsky; and an Italian monsignor who came to Turkey as Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, but a decade after leaving the country acquired a new name: Pope John XXIII.

What has become of the Pera? It has been restored to late 19th-century glory by a Dubai-based luxury-hotel chain. As for intrigue, you’ll have to bring your own.

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