Grande Dames around the world
The Ritz, Paris
This 18th century townhouse hotel was founded in 1898 by the Swiss hotelier César Ritz, one of the first hotels in Europe to offer an ensuite bathroom, electricity and a telephone in each room. But these amenities weren’t what drew politicians, royals, writers, film stars and musicians to The Ritz; the big draw was the other guests. This 159-room icon has the starriest heritage of them all.
Couturier Coco Chanel called the hotel home for 34 years, until her death. Writer Marcel Proust ate dinner here almost every night. And the cocktail bar still bears the name of legendary imbiber and writer Ernest Hemingway. The Ritz also plays a starring role in many Lost Generation works of fiction, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Noel Coward’s play Semi-Monde.
Not all of the Ritz’s history has been glitzy; in 1940 the Nazis took over several floors when they occupied Paris, generously giving themselves a 90 per cent discount. In 1997, it was out the back door of the Ritz that Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al-Fayed (son of the owner, Mohamed) fled, attempting to avoid the paparazzi, the night of their untimely deaths. Twentieth century history would look very different without the Ritz. ritzparis.com
Belmond Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro
With its neoclassical wedding cake facade, this 1923 hotel is the most iconic building on Rio’s most iconic beach, Copacabana. Designed by the French architect Joseph Gire expressly to rival the European and North American grande dame hotels, it immediately set a new standard for South American luxury hospitality. But among this cadre of grande dame hotels, the Copa is the one that lets her hair down, that refuses to stand on ceremony, and has no time for pretension or ostentatious formality.
One year after opening, in 1924, it hosted Rio’s inaugural Carnival Ball, a tradition it has maintained every year, drawing quite the party crowd, including Orson Welles, Ginger Rogers, Mary Pickford, Joan Fontaine, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Brigitte Bardot, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kim Novak, Kirk Douglas and, more recently, Gerard Butler and Christian
Louboutin. Rock royalty including the Rolling Stones and Queen famously stayed here for performances that went down in rock history, giving interviews on the roof. For nearly a century, the Copacabana Palace has been synonymous with hedonism, high society and international jetsetters. Yet staff extend precisely the same welcome to a returning rock legend as they will to an octogenarian couple that visit
every year from São Paulo for Carnival. The Copacabana Palace doesn’t care who you are; she cares how much fun you are. belmond.com
The Plaza, New York
When this 20-storey Beaux-Arts landmark opened its doors in 1907, the Upper East Side immediately became Manhattan’s most soughtafter address, and the place to be during the heady days of the Jazz Age. In 1964, The Beatles were denied a reservation by the hotel’s manager, Alphonse Salomone, who felt it would be disruptive to other guests. Salomone only changed his mind when his 12-year-old daughter threw a tantrum. The Beatles’ New York arrival became a moment in rock history, and although the thousands of screaming fans were a headache, the Fab Four themselves behaved like absolute gents.
Even today, it’s one of those grande dame hotels that makes guests feel like they’ve stepped onto a movie set the moment they enter the lobby, bedecked with gilded chandeliers, gleaming marble and elaborate floral arrangements. This surreal cinematic sensation is only reinforced by the fact that virtually every angle glimpsed in the hotel has been rendered on screen.
Cary Grant sipped a Martini in the Oak Bar in North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 hit, and you can expect flashbacks of everything from Crocodile Dundee to Bride Wars to The Great Gatsby, at every turn. Modern Manhattan is not short of gleaming landmark hotels clamouring for the title of “icon” but none of them can snatch the crown off this Queen Bee’s head. theplazany.com
Raffles, Singapore
There are a few worthy Southeast Asian contenders, perhaps most notably Bangkok’s Mandarin Oriental or The Peninsula in Hong Kong. But no other hotel in the region inspires quite as much loyalty as Raffles, one of Asia’s oldest hotels, and one that has charmed the socks off guests since it opened its doors in 1887, originally as a 10-room bungalow. Named after British statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of colonial-era Singapore, it has textbook architectural flourishes to match, and has evolved steadily over the years to its present incarnation as a 115-room luxury hotel.
Queen Elizabeth II, Charlie Chaplin and Michael Jackson are among the most notable guests, but Raffles has an impressive literary history. The writer Somerset Maugham was a regular in Long
Bar (where the national cocktail, the Singapore Sling, was created by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon in 1915), while Joseph Conrad was one of the hotel’s first guests. In 1889, Rudyard Kipling wrote about the hotel in From Sea To Sea. But it was Maugham who gave Raffles its most famous epitaph and secured its place in the imaginations and hearts of travellers and locals alike: “Raffles stands for all the fables of the exotic East.” rafflessingapore.com ●