Hotel Grande Bretagne
The Hotel Grande Bretagne is a historic grand hotel on Syntagma Square in Athens . It is now part of The Luxury Collection Hotels & Resorts of the Starwood Group .
history
The hotel was opened by Antonios Dimitrios in 1842, and Evstathios Lampsas took over in 1874. In the 19th century it was an important transit station for colonial officials on their way to the Orient and the Far East. In 1896 the IOC used the hotel for banquets during the first Olympic Games .
The current hotel building was originally designed around 1862 by the architect Theophil Hansen and implemented by his site manager, the architect Ernst Ziller . Major structural changes took place in the 1950s: the hotel was almost completely demolished and rebuilt with thicker walls, although the appearance has remained the same. Then it was increased in the same design language, this “deception” often escapes even historians, so that the whole structure (including the addition) is seen as a building from 1874.
The list of prominent guests is long and includes artists like Sophia Loren , Ingrid Bergman and Maria Callas , writers like Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Truman Capote , entrepreneurs like the Krupps, Kennedys and the Rockefellers. as well as heads of state. Mary Pickford is said to have booked a room just to house her shoes. The hotel was a popular place of refuge even in times of crisis. Grand Duchess Elena of Russia even chose it as permanent accommodation after her flight from the Bolsheviks. In 1974, 31 rooms were added and the well-known GB Corner bar opened in 1976. In the late 1990s, an administrative merger with the adjacent, equally historic Grand Hotel King George was negotiated, but this did not materialize, so that in 2000 the Grande Bretagne was taken over by the Hyatt chain , which renovated it from 2001 to 2003 for € 82 million let. In 2005, Hyatt parted with all historic luxury hotels and the Grande Bretagne has since been part of the Starwood Luxury Collection and the Laskaridis shipping company.
business
450 employees work in the hotel, it has 290 rooms and 31 suites . In addition to the three restaurants, there are two swimming pools and a spa area. The best suite in the hotel is the 400 m² Royal Suite . This has its own wine cellar and a gold-clad bathroom and costs € 12,000 per night. The suite's guest book shows people like David Bowie, Francis Ford Coppola or Giorgio Armani. Simpler rooms in the Grande Bretagne cost from € 300 in the low season (as of 2008) . Valuable items such as furniture and works of art have been collected since the company was founded, and the oldest carpets are over 300 years old.
Web links
- Hotel website.
- Article about the hotel in Die Zeit .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maro Kardamitsi-Adami; Dionysis Zivas (preface); Giorgis Gerolympos (photos): Classical Revival: The Architecture of Ernst Ziller 1837–1923 . Melissa Publishing House, Athens 2006, ISBN 960-204-275-3 , pp. 279 (English).
Coordinates: 37 ° 58 ′ 34.5 ″ N , 23 ° 44 ′ 7.5 ″ E