The hotel was built between the years of 1938-40 by leading conservative architect Johann Emil Schaudt, who is best known for designing KaDeWe – Germany’s answer to Harrods. He designed Das Stue to emulate the appearance of leading German department stores, with its neoclassical curved façade being tiered with cascading balconies.
It served as the Danish government’s embassy until the Second World War, after which they reclaimed it and used it as their embassy for the next 38 years. It was sold for public housing in 1970, but fell into disrepair until city officials turned it into a huge office complex in 1983. From 1986, Deutsche Bundespost (the German Post Office) and Deutsche Telekom used it as an executive training site.
It was finally converted into a luxury hotel in 2009, and along with a section of new build which makes the most of views over the neighbouring Tiergarten, has retained many of its historical features such as parquet flooring, French doors, and restored wooden inlays.
Today, the hotel is bursting with original architectural features alongside contemporary and comfortable furnishings. It being named ‘Das Stue’, which translates to ‘living room’ in Danish, reflects the owner’s intention to re-establish a drawing room, or salon culture, in Berlin. This salon culture is very much alive, with delicious food, plentiful drinks, a scenic terrace, live music, an extensive spa and pool and even a three-storey library making any visit memorable.
Das Stue is conveniently located. Berlin Tegel airport is nine kilometers (a 20-minute drive) from the hotel; Berlin Schönefeld is 40km and a 45-minute car ride away. Trains from all over Europe go to Hauptbahnhof station, which is 2km from the hotel. The closest bus station is Corneliusbrücke, from where the hotel is a 4 minute walk along the edge of the scenic Tiergarten. For those with a car, there’s a public car park a 10 minute walk from the hotel which costs 18 euro a night.
]]>The site that Dukes London now occupies – on St James’s Place – has held a wide variety of venues over the centuries. In 1532 Henry VIII built St James’s Palace on the site, which was formerly occupied by a hospital for treating leprosy. The palace was part-hunting lodge, part-escape from court life for Henry, while apparently also acting as a secret meeting place for the king and Anne Boleyn before she became his second wife.
Before Dukes London opened in 1908, nearby townhouses in St James’s Place hosted the likes of Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, composer Frédéric Chopin (who lived in one of the houses shortly before his final London performance) and composer Edward Elgar, who was also a regular guest at Dukes in its early years.
Famous faces have been a regular occurrence at Dukes ever since, whether in the hotel, restaurant, bar or all three. Princess Diana and the Queen Mother are both rumoured to have visited Dukes London, for example. Outside of royal figures, one of the most well-known visitors was British author Ian Fleming, creator of the world’s most famous fictional spy, James Bond. Fleming was a regular at Dukes Bar, and after seeing its elegant, lavish interior, it seems like the ideal place for 007 (and his similarly stylish creator) to enjoy a drink.
There are various tales attached to Fleming’s time at Dukes Bar, some stating that it was the venue in which he created the iconic Vesper Martini (composed of several measures of gin, one of vodka and half a measure of French liqueur Lillet) that Bond orders in both the novel and film version of Casino Royale. Other stories claim the bar inspired him to coin Bond’s ‘shaken, not stirred’ catchphrase, in reference to how he prefers his martinis.
Dukes Bar is still known for its martinis, and the bar, hotel and restaurant are still a favourite haunt of those wanting a truly luxurious break. And if martinis aren’t your thing, there’s always the champagne afternoon tea for those after a different take on quintessentially British indulgence.
Dukes London is a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace, the Queen of England’s London residence. Many more of London’s most famous sights and attractions are also within easy reach of Dukes, including Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery.
Green Park Tube station is a short walk from Dukes, and other tube stations (and numerous bus stops) are also nearby.
]]>The hotel was originally created by Lorenz Adlon, a successful coffeehouse entrepreneur, who had spotted an opportunity to launch a new style of hotel in the city, inspired by the famous luxury hotels of New York such as the Waldorf Astoria or The Ritz in Paris. These hotels offered a very different design experience to anything seen in Germany before. With their lavishly decorated dining halls, big ballrooms, smoking lounges and lively café culture, this new generation of hotel quickly became popular, and exciting, playgrounds for rich nobility to socialise in. The hotel also offered a suitable luxury base for the state guests of Kaiser Wilhelm II to stay in when visiting and he helped Adlon purchase property in a prime location in the German capital.
The hotel was the most modern in the country when it opened, offering the novelty of both hot and cold running water alongside unique facilities such as a ladies’ lounge, a music room, a barber shop, and an interior garden with a famous elephant fountain that was originally a gift from a Maharaja. It even had its own on-site laundry and an electric power plant to keep things running smoothly for its wealthy guests. From its launch until the end of World War Two, the hotel hosted some of the most famous names in modern history including the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and Franklin Roosevelt. It was mostly destroyed during the war years, reopening in 1997 under the brand name of the Kempinski hotel group.
Rebuilt in the image of its predecessor, the property sits on the same spot and continues to attract celebrity guests, most notably as the hotel that pop star Michael Jackson controversially dangled his child from one of the hotel’s balconies. The lounge area contains a replica of the elephant fountain that was a famous feature of the original hotel.
The Brandenburg Gate S-Bahn and U-Bahn station is located next to the hotel, the closest stop is Brandenburger Tor (S-Bahn). From the airport, a taxi takes approximately 55 minutes.
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Max Zellermayer first opened Hotel am Steinplatz as a luxury hotel in 1913. It was originally designed by August Endell, architect of Berlin’s famous Hackesche Höfe, a complex of connected courtyards, located in the city centre. The hotel facade is listed as an historical monument and is famous for being in the Art Nouveau design style. Beyond being a hotel, the building has been used as a stately home, officer’s mess, artists’ bar and retirement home. After the October Revolution, a number of Russian aristocrats stayed in hotel suites, and the hotel was a popular meeting point for the Berlin and European artistic scene, with Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov and Swedish singer Zarah Leander regular guests.
In 1947 the hotel was reopened by the children of the original owner, Max Zellermayer, with Heinz Zellermayer gaining particular local notoriety in 1949 when he persuaded the commander of the American sector of Berlin, Frank Howley, to abolish the unpopular evening curfew for restaurants in the city. With its avant-garde basement bar ‘Volle Pulle’ in the basement, the Steinplatz became a secret meeting point for artists and intellectuals, attracting the likes of German writer Heinrich Böll , German artist Günter Grass, the French film star Brigitte Bardot, Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti and German-French actress Romy Schneider as guests.
The hotel went through a total refurbishment in 2012 since it became the first German hotel in Marriott Hotel’s Autograph Collection. It now features a spa on the top floors of the hotel and a restaurant, which serves up modern versions of classic German recipes and locally brewed craft beer.
The hotel is is located next to the shopping street Kurfürstendamm; the U- and S-Bahn Zoologischer Garten are a short walk away, with the main train station a 15 minute journey to the hotel, at the stop Savignyplatz.
]]>The building housing the hotel dates back to 1758, when King Louis XV commissioned Ange-Jacques Gabriel (a renowned French architect of the time) to build two grand residences overlooking the vast Place de la Concorde, which Gabriel had also designed. One of the resulting mansions came to be the home of the family of the Count of Crillon in 1788, whose descendants lived there until the early 1900s. After being acquired by the Crillon family, the palace was briefly used by Marie Antoinette, who reputedly took piano lessons there. In October 1793 she was guillotined outside the palace on the Place de la Concorde.
15 years before that, in 1778, the building’s Salon des Aigles was the setting for the signing of a French-American treaty recognising the Declaration of Independence. Just over 140 years later, in 1919, the same room was used for the signing of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
In 1909, shortly after the building had left the ownership of the Crillons, architect Walter-André Destailleur turned the palace into a luxury hotel. It proved to be a wise decision, as the hotel was soon attracting royalty and celebrities from around the globe, including literary figures and names from across arts and entertainments. Some of those to have stayed at Hôtel de Crillon over the years have included Charlie Chaplin, Igor Stravinsky, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Peggy Guggenheim, Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Taylor Swift.
The hotel reopened in 2017 after a four-year renovation, featuring modernisations (while being sympathetic to the original Neoclassical style) and several suites designed by fashion designer and former creative director of Chanel, Karl Lagerfield.
The hotel borders Place de la Concorde, which sits on the northern bank of the Seine River and between Jardin des Tuileries and Jardin des Champs-Élysées, adjoining the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Its proximity to this Paris landmark means there is plenty of public transport access nearby, including multiple bus stops. It is less than a ten-minute walk from the Tuileries, Madeleine and Champs-Élysées Clemenceau Metro stations.
]]>Built in 1889, the building was home to the headquarters of Germany’s Dresdner Bank and, after World War Two, hosted the state bank of communist East Germany (D.D.R.). However the sombre D.D.R. officials, who disliked the building’s luxuriousness, boarded over the colourful mosaic stone floors and ornate moulding, which are still in place today. Other unique aspects of the hotels history are visible for guests to see, such as the bullet and grenade fragments from World War Two, which remain embedded in the original wood panelling of the first-floor suites, the former offices of government economic planners.
The hotel is located near one of Berlin’s most famous landmarks, Unter den Linden, the famous shopping street in the upmarket district of the Mitte district. Guests checking into the hotel are in a for a unique banking themed experience. The bank’s old jewel vault has been converted into an underground luxurious spa, with the original steel-and-copper money vault now reformed into a chic nail salon. Whilst rooms once used as bank manager’s offices are now suites and the cashier’s hall has been turned into a rather grand ballroom.
Various buses run along Unter den Linden and there are two different U-Bahn stations located nearby, a few minutes walk away. The airport is a 35 minutes drive away with the nearest car park the Q-Park Operncaree.
]]>Famous Parisian store Le Bon Marché came up with the idea of creating upscale accommodation that could be used by ‘important’ customers. The hotel was built in 1910 on Boulevard Raspail, which adjoins Le Bon Marché’s location. Architects commissioned sculptors to create the hotel’s striking Art Nouveau façade.
It didn’t take long for Lutetia to become a luxurious retreat for various bohemian and intellectual circles. Pablo Picasso, Henry Matisse, Josephine Baker, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and singer Marianne Oswald were all regular guests at the hotel, and James Joyce allegedly wrote part of ‘Ulysses’ there. Charles de Gaulle spent his honeymoon in the Suite Amour.
In 1940, after the French Government evacuated Paris during the German occupation, Lutetia was requisitioned for the Abwehr (the German military intelligence unit). When Paris was liberated, Charles de Gaulle ordered that Lutetia become a base to receive survivors of concentration camps and others who had been deported and displaced during the war. Thousands of people passed through there, hoping to be reunited with loved ones.
Lutetia’s glitzy reputation was further solidified in the 1950s, when the Taittinger family (of Taittinger champagne) purchased the hotel. It remained in their ownership for many years before being sold in 2005.
Tributes to the hotel’s historic association with the arts remain today: French-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker, who spent much time at Lutetia, has both a stylish suite and a sumptuous Art Nouveau hotel bar named after her. More recent famous guests have included Yves Saint Laurent co-founder Pierre Bergé and American film director David Lynch, who designed one of the hotel suites.
In the 1980s, French fashion designer Sonia Rykiel revamped some of the hotel interiors and suites, but a grander, fuller renovation began taking place in 2014. The number of rooms were reduced from 230 to 184 to allow for more spacious accommodation. The resulting refurbishment celebrated Lutetia’s Art Nouveau and Art Deco heritage, but blended these styles with contemporary, forward-thinking design.
The hotel is situated in the arty and bustling Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is moments away from the Sèvres-Babylone Metro station and also very close to several other Metro stations, including Saint-Sulpice and Rennes. There are numerous bus stops surrounding the hotel. The Musée Maillol art museum is a few minutes away on foot, and other famous Paris sights like the Louvre art museum and Notre-Dame Cathedral are easily reachable via public transport.
]]>Built in a formerly rural area in 1930, the hotel was founded by Fausto Figueiredo, who commissioned architect Henry Martinet to bring his ideas to life – the key aim was to build a venue combining a thermal spa with a sports and leisure venue.
Figueiredo’s goal for creating a successful hotel business was primarily to attract customers from England and those travelling by train from Biarritz – a coastal town in southwest France – to Estoril. To achieve this grand aim, Figueiredo became involved with the plans to create a railway running to Estoril, which began properly in 1928.
Since Portugal was, officially speaking, neutral during the Second World War, various royal families went into exile in Estoril, some basing themselves at Hotel Palácio, which had become well-known as an exclusive spot by this time. The hotel’s popularity with European royal families continued after the end of the war, acting as a favourite haunt for Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, French and Romanian families across the years. A Royal Gallery, featuring photos of various royal figures at the hotel, was even created in 2011.
As well as a significant royal contingent, it’s alleged that the hotel also played host to various spies and members of the intelligence communities from both Britain and Germany during World War Two. One particularly famous example turned out to be Ian Fleming, a British writer known for creating the James Bond series, who also served as a British naval intelligence officer. Fleming stayed at the hotel in 1941 while working with Duško Popov, a Serbian double agent who is thought to have been one of the inspirations for the character of James Bond.
That wasn’t the only role of the hotel in the James Bond saga, however. More than two decades later, Hotel Palácio Estoril was used as a filming location for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the sixth film in the Bond series, released in 1969. Not only does Estoril feature as James Bond’s hotel in the film (the exterior, swimming pool, lobby and rooms all feature in the film), but members of the cast and crew stayed there during filming in 1968, including George Lazenby, who played Bond.
The hotel is still a popular lavish getaway. The famous Bar Estoril visited by Fleming is still in use and features a ‘007 Martini’ in tribute, based on the Vesper Martini created by Fleming and ordered by Bond in the 1953 novel Casino Royale, and later in the 2006 film of the same name. The martini recipe in both the book and the hotel consists of gin, vodka and Lillet, a French aperitif. José Diogo, a hotel concierge who appeared in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (he also played a concierge in the film, handing George Lazenby a room key), still works at Hotel Palácio Estoril.
The hotel is located in Estoril, a town in Cascais, Portugal. Estoril is around 30 minutes away from the centre of Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city, by car. It’s also 15 minutes away from Sintra, a beautiful and hugely popular town for tourists visiting Portugal.
]]>L’Hotel will forever be known as the place where Oscar Wilde spent his final days, passing away in one of the hotel rooms in 1900. It was here that Wilde is reputed to have uttered one of his most famous lines, claiming to have been “dying beyond my means” – a typically witty reference to finishing his life in an extravagant hotel he couldn’t afford (the exact text of the quote is disputed, but it’s widely believed that Wilde did say something to this effect, or perhaps even write it on his hotel bill, according to some).
But L’Hotel’s history goes far deeper than just Wilde’s colourful story. Alongside other hotels,L’Hotel claims to be “the world’s first boutique hotel”. Whether or not the boutique claim holds weight, L’Hotel certainly boasts almost 200 years of upscale history as an opulent destination loved by the elite.
The site of L’Hotel is the location of part of La Reine Margot’s 17th century palace, specifically the Pavillon d’Amour (Pavilion of Love). Célestin-Joseph Happe built the hotel in 1828, before it became Hotel d’Allemagne in 1868 and Hotel d’Alsace in 1870. It was still named Hotel d’Alsace when Oscar Wilde died there in 1900. Alongside Wilde, L’Hotel has welcomed many other famous names over the years, including Grace Kelly (Princess Grace of Monaco), Frank Sinatra, Jim Morrison, Elizabeth Taylor and Salvador Dalí.
The room that housed L’Hotel’s most famous guest has been converted into the Oscar Wilde Suite, paying tribute to Wilde’s creative flair and providing a writing desk, in case guests are inspired to pen something themselves. The venue has been given a modern makeover by architect Jacques Garcia, while still resolutely retaining its sumptuous, historical character. The rooms are just as luxurious as you’d expect from somewhere with L’Hotel’s heritage and there’s even a hammam pool and steam room if you can tear yourself away from the gorgeous rooms.
The hotel is in St Germain-des-Prés on Rue des Beaux-Arts, found in an area known as the Left Bank of Paris, France. The Louvre art museum is a short walk across the River Seine, while another famous art museum – the Musée d’Orsay – is also nearby. St Germain-des-Prés is also a fantastic area to explore and features numerous cafes, restaurants, bars and shops. There are several bus stops near to L’Hotel, plus the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Metro station five minutes away on foot.
]]>With former guests including the likes of Queen Victoria, Tchaikovsky, Franklin Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor, Salvador Dalí, Orson Wells, you’ll be in good company if you stay here. It started as a Calais coaching inn opened by a postmaster, Charles-Augustin Meurice, in 1771, primarily to house wealthy travellers making their way from Britain to Paris. Charles-Augustin’s son built a second inn in Paris in 1818 to house the same guests who had stayed at the Calais outpost. In 1835 the hotel moved to its current site.
Le Meurice quickly become a popular haunt for the rich and famous, hosting numerous parties and dinners, some of which reputedly lasted through the night and into the next day. When Queen Victoria chose Le Meurice for her state visit to Paris in 1855, the entire first floor was renovated for the occasion.
In the 1880s, Le Meurice offered guests use of telephone lines (the hotel claims it was the first in Paris to do this, although other hotels make similar claims). In 1907, Le Meurice provided private bathrooms in every room and suite – again, the hotel claims it was the first in Paris to do this.
Word spread quickly and it wasn’t long before Le Meurice had hosted a grand list of rulers and royals from across the globe. These included the King of Montenegro, King George VI, the Sultan of Zanzibar, the Maharaja of Jaïpur, and the Grand Duchess of Russia. King Alphonse XIII of Spain was also a regular guest, bringing his own furniture to his preferred suite. Throughout it all, the hotel’s roof garden restaurant was a favourite hangout for the high society figures that populated Le Meurice, offering magnificent panoramic views across Paris.
The hotel continues to operate as an exclusive destination spot to be seen in – if you can afford it. Its glitzy, opulent heritage are paid tribute to throughout, and are combined with contemporary innovations such as the Restaurant Le Dalí, inspired by one of the hotel’s famous guests.
Le Meurice lies on the northern edge of the famous 17th century Tuileries Garden in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. It’s also extremely close to some of the city’s most well-known sights and attractions, including Place de la Concorde a few minutes to the west and the Louvre art museum to the east. The hotel is almost opposite the Tuileries Metro station and is next to the Castiglione bus stop.
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