Fascinating stories behind the world’s greatest hotels

When Cary Grant strode out of the Mediterranean in his tartan swimming trunks to settle in the sands near Grace Kelly, he would probably not have imagined that the twin-domed façade that towered over them would, by the 21st century, have become what is often said to be the most photographed hotel in the world. In part, of course, it was his doing.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film To Catch a Thief, in which Grant starred, put the Carlton Cannes on the big screen, lingering lovingly over its interiors and making its neo-classical, Belle-Époque façade eminently recognisable.

The hotel re-opened earlier this year for the next chapter in its storied life; still part of the IHG Hotels & Resorts group and now rebranded as A Regent Hotel, having been impressively reimagined by French designer Tristan Aure.

Step out of the door, past the elegant lobby staff whose pleated blue skirts resemble Grace Kelly’s dress in To Catch a Thief, and stop to look back. The two domes on the seaward corners of the building were modelled allegedly on the breasts of the then-famous courtesan, Carolina Otero. 

And the name? It translates as “Free Man” from the Scandinavian. History relates that it was chosen for its meaning by the Carlton’s main founder, Grand Duke Michael of Russia, grandson of the Tsar, who was keen on the new fashion of sea-bathing but sought more comfort in a hotel than the local offerings could provide, and was living in exile due to his marriage to a commoner, a granddaughter of the novelist Pushkin. 

But he may also have been influenced by the Carlton Hotel in London, which had opened some 12 years earlier in 1899. Its name came from nearby Carlton House, the former home of the Prince Regent, and remarkably fast after opening it was considered one of the capital’s best. 

That, no doubt, was due to it being managed by César Ritz, with Auguste Escoffier as head chef. That remarkable duo, who together changed the face of hospitality, had recently been dismissed from London’s most fashionable hotel, The Savoy, by its Manager Richard D’Oyly Carte for financial irregularities. 

But with the acclaim from the opening of their Hôtel Ritz in Paris in 1898 still ringing in their ears, they agreed to take on London’s Hotel Carlton. It soon enticed the Savoy’s clientele, including the Prince of Wales and the Marlborough House set, over to its fashionable Palm Court. But just at the height of its fame, when it was busy with preparations to mark the coronation of Edward VII in 1902, the King fell ill with appendicitis, the coronation was postponed and the shock caused Ritz to have a severe nervous breakdown, from which he never fully recovered.

Meanwhile across London, Claridge’s was making a name for itself as “the Resort of Kings and Princes”. Originally a lodging house named Mivart’s in Brook St, William and Marianne Claridge took it over in 1854. The ultimate accolade came in 1860 when Queen Victoria visited Claridge’s to call on Empress Eugenie of France, starting a tradition of royal visits that continues to this day.

History doesn’t recall what Queen Victoria drank on her visit, but records do show that when Mahatma Gandhi stayed there in 1931, he brought a pet goat with him so he was able to get the fresh goat’s milk that he had been prescribed. Served, obviously by white-gloved Claridge’s butlers in a silver jug.

Spencer Tracy is known to have said: “Not that I intend to die, but when I do, I don’t want to go to heaven, I want to go to Claridge’s.” Over in Paris, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “When I dream of an afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place at the Ritz in Paris.” 

It is an extraordinary achievement to have been born as the youngest of 13 children in a poor family of sheep farmers and leave behind the legacy of an adjective. “Ritzy” defines luxurious or elegant, and Ritz himself, described as “the hotelier of Kings and the King of hoteliers” by Edward VII, can still be seen in the details of his eponymous hotel in Paris. 

It was Ritz who decided that peach, still used in the bath robes today, was the most flattering colour for women. And it was Ritz who said “le client n’a jamais tort”, best translated as the customer is always right – a standard all over the world ever since. It seems totally justified then that so many Ritzes have been named after a man who in his lifetime changed hospitality forever.

When the Hôtel Ritz opened in Paris 1898, with a bathtub (after Edward VII apparently got stuck in one there, during a ménage à trois, they became king-size – literally) in every room, it sounded the death knell of its renowned neighbour in Place Vendôme, the Hôtel Bristol, which had opened in 1816. 

While its days were numbered, a sumptuous new hotel was about to open on Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré and was looking for a name. The name Bristol had originally been chosen to attract the English, the most important customers of the time, but without seeming unpatriotic to the local French who had just been defeated by the English in the last of the Napoleonic Wars. It came, the hotel insisted, from bon viveur Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, whose somewhat scandalous (especially as he was also a Bishop) pursuit of pleasure across the European continent was sufficiently well known that his name had become a byword for luxury and good living. And so in 1925 Le Bristol was born, home to the world’s good and great since the Roaring Twenties.

Across Europe, in Warsaw, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, composer, concert pianist and later, in 1919, the country’s Prime Minister, had decided to also use the name Bristol for the glittering hotel he opened in 1901. It chalked up several firsts for the country, including an elevator. 

Edvard Grieg who, when accepting an invitation to play at the National Philharmonic Hall, had asked condescendingly for a bed to be found for him without bed bugs, apparently took in the impressive expanses of marble and the secessionist art work in the lobby and murmured: “I am sorry, I am sorry”. His apology was obviously gracefully received for he became a regular guest, presumably won over not only by the elegance of the hotel but by the staff within it. Which any traveller knows are the most vital ingredient of any good hotel.

As the concierge at the Carlton Cannes said to me, wisely, earlier this year: “It is the emotions we try to provide; everything else can be bought.”

Mary Lussiana was a guest of Carlton Cannes, A Regent Hotel, which offers doubles from £310.

Have you stayed at any of these hotels? Please let us know in the comments.