Hotel Lutetia

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The Hôtel Lutetia by night
The hotel Lutetia

The Hôtel Lutetia is a hotel of the five-star category with a total capacity of 184 rooms and suites (as of 2018) in the 6th arrondissement of Paris . It is located in the Notre-Dame-des-Champs district at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail (number 51) and Rue de Sèvres, about 200 meters from the department store Le Bon Marché , whose owners launched it.

It bears the first time around 50/51 BC. In the commentaries on the Gallic War ( De bello Gallico ) written by Gaius Iulius Caesar , names of the ancient city of Lutetia are attested to .

architecture

The hotel was built in 1910 based on a design signed jointly by the architects Louis-Hippolyte Boileau (1878–1948) and Henri-Alexis Tauzin (1879–1918), which won an award in 1908 . The facades were designed by Paul Belmondo , the father of the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo . A first expansion was made in 1913 and a second in 1926. A renovation took place in 1929/1930. The Hotel Lutetia is considered to be the first Art Nouveau (French: Art Nouveau ) hotel in Paris and has an Art Deco style bar .

In 1985 Sonia Rykiel was commissioned with the redesign. She placed various works of art by Arman and César in the rooms on the ground floor. At that time, the hotel had 230 rooms, 30 of them in the Art Deco style .

From April 2014 to July 2018, the hotel was renovated for around 200 million euros. The house's top chefs serve good French cuisine and the tables are elegantly set.

history

Towards the end of the French Third Republic , opponents of the Nazi dictatorship met for the first time in September 1935 in the premises of this hotel, which gave the group, generally known as the Lutetia Circle (later a committee for the preparation of a German Popular Front ). The aim was to bring together organizations and people from different anti- fascist currents for the purpose of planning and building a unified popular front . The first “Popular Front Conference” took place on February 2, 1936 at the Hotel Lutetia. After a last meeting on April 10 and 11, 1937, the project failed due to fundamental differences.

During the German occupation of France in World War II , the Hôtel Lutetia was the seat of the German defense and counter-espionage and the SS . In the defense control room , among other was from July 1940 to July 1942 Alfred Toepfer in use. Resistance members suffered numerous ill-treatment and severe torture in the basement.

After the end of the war, the hotel served as a rescue station and first home for survivors of the concentration camps .

Owners and guests

From 1955 to 2005 the hotel was owned by the Taittinger Champagne dynasty , then it was owned by the Israeli Alfred Akirov (Alrov Group).

Famous guests of the hotel included Theodor W. Adorno , Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , André Gide , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , Albert Cohen , Juliette Gréco , Catherine Deneuve , Isabelle Huppert , Gérard Depardieu and Charles de Gaulle .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hôtel Lutetia  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Maria Ludovica Cantelli, Jacques Guillerme: L'illusion monumentale: Paris, 1872-1936 , éd. Mardaga, 1991 ( online ), p. 55.
  2. ^ Tauzin, Henri , in the database of the Institut national d'histoire de France ( online ).
  3. ↑ Website of the hotel , accessed on February 3, 2018
  4. ↑ Michaela Wiegel : The Lutetia should not lose its soul. FAZ.net, April 23, 2014.
  5. ↑ Legendary hotel "Lutetia" open again FAZ.net, July 12, 2018.
  6. ↑ https://community.zeit.de/user/monsieur-rainer/beitrag/2010/08/20/die-organisation-des-deutschen-repressionsapparates-frankrei
  7. ^ Gretel Adorno / Walter Benjamin: Correspondence 1930-1940. Frankfurt a. M. 2019. p. 254.

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 4 "  N , 2 ° 19 ′ 36"  E