This old phone at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul was used by Agatha Christie during her stay at this hotel. Agatha Christie had frequented Istanbul and the Pera Palace Hotel in the late twenties and early thirties, when the hotel was at its height. Christie, inspired by her long train ride, wrote her famous book, Murder on the Orient Express, in room 411 in 1934. The hotel was built to house the guests of the famous Orient Express, the train that ran from London through continental Europe, finishing its course in Istanbul. Crowded with 19th century furniture and opulent decorations, the hotel has not been a stranger to media attention and controversy in its 110-year history. It has bedded the likes of treasonous World War I spy Mata Hari, and Edward VIII, the King of Britain who abdicated to marry the American divorcee, Wallace Simpson. During the War of Turkish Independence, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk planned his military resistance in one of the rooms.