The mansion was designed by Sarkis Balyan, a member of the Armenian architectural dynasty that shaped much of nineteenth-century Istanbul — the Balyans were responsible for Dolmabahçe Palace, Çırağan Palace, and dozens of other landmark buildings along the Bosphorus. Finished in 1875, the three-storey brick manor was built beside the Ortaköy Mosque on a prime stretch of waterfront. It was given as a wedding gift in 1889 to Princess Esma Sultan, daughter of Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz. The mansion remained in Ottoman possession until 1915, when the dynasty's control of private properties began to unravel along with the empire itself. Over the following decades it served unglamorous functions: first a tobacco warehouse, then a coal depot. In 1975, fire destroyed the interior, leaving only the exterior brick walls standing.

For nearly two decades, the shell sat. The walls were structurally sound — Sarkis Balyan had built to last — but there was no roof, no floor, no interior to speak of. Istanbul's Bosphorus waterfront is among the most valuable real estate on earth, and yet the ruined yalı persisted, neither demolished nor restored. It became, in a way, part of the neighborhood's texture: the picturesque ruin next to the mosque, visible from the ferries that cross the strait. Ortaköy itself was changing around it — the neighborhood had become one of Istanbul's most fashionable stretches of waterfront, with cafes and boutiques clustering near the mosque, and the two Bosphorus bridges anchoring the northern and southern horizons. The ruined mansion occupied this premium spot in a state of quiet disintegration. Then, in the early 1990s, The Marmara Collection purchased the property. The decision they made with it was unconventional.

Rather than demolish the ruins and build something new, or attempt a full historical restoration to replicate the lost interior, the architects — initially Haluk Sezgin and Philippe Robert, with a subsequent redesign by Gökhan Avcıoğlu completed in 2005 — chose a third path. They kept the original brick exterior exactly as it was, scorched history and all, and inserted a modern steel-and-glass structure within it. The result is a building that reads as a ruin from the outside and as a contemporary event space from within: exposed brick walls climbing to open sky, a glass canopy overhead, multiple levels of steel structure where Ottoman timber floors once were. It is an honest architecture — it does not pretend the fire didn't happen.

Opened in 2001 as a multipurpose event venue managed by The Marmara Hotel chain, the Esma Sultan Mansion offers views of the Bosphorus and the bridge from within its glass-roofed interior. The venue hosts concerts for the Istanbul International Jazz Festival and the Istanbul International Music Festival, alongside private events, conferences, and receptions. The garden can accommodate up to 1,000 guests; the interior floors hold several hundred more. It sits directly adjacent to the Ortaköy Mosque — one of Istanbul's most recognizable small mosques, with its twin minarets reflected in the Bosphorus — making the venue's immediate surroundings among the most atmospheric in the city. Esma Sultan's name, and by extension her father the sultan's, survive in the building's title. The princess herself has largely been absorbed into the building's story, the wedding gift outlasting its recipient by over a century.