TURKISH DELIGHT

Türkiye's remote D Maris Bay resort offers a verdant oasis of pristine beaches, opulent amenities and a variety of world-class culinary outposts

- NICOLAS STECHER

There are but a handful of characteristics that uplift a luxury hotel from the fields of the elite into the world of the truly sublime. For some, it's provenance-a history unlike any other that carves itself into the stones of legend. Think the Ritz Paris, the original Raffles in Singapore or the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera. For others, heightened levels of luxury previously unseen make their mark. Consider Dubai's sail ship-inspired Jumeirah Burj AI Arab. And for a select few, it's location that consecrates their singularity. The Brando, plopped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on an atoll 15 miles from the closest human being, comes to mind.

It's in this world where the D Maris Bay in Türkiye exists. Located from the fabled Ottoman sultan Bayezid. Looking out, untouched nature is all you see: across distant bays and shorelines, over the shrub-carpeted mountains in every direction, not a single human building or man-made scar. If you squint you can almost see Odysseus navigating his galley between the Greek islands of Symi and Nisyros straight ahead. The sense of vast space, idyllic nature and profound serenity suddenly and intensely elates the spirit.

Two floors below, the aqua Christian Dior pool shimmers in the Mediterranean sun like a beautifully cut sapphire, beckoning you to its edge like a postcard filed from a Slim Aarons fantasy. Beyond that and further below, the five beaches of D Maris Bay extend in a horseshoe into the water-a sugar-sanded "C" defining where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. These beaches are a thing of singular attraction, for when the founder of D Maris Bay, Ayhan Şahenk, opened the hotel in 2013 he had the prescience to partner with some of the best culinary brands in the world.