Raffles Hotel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Raffles Hotel driveway
The Raffles Hotel from Beach Road
Raffles Hotel courtyard garden
At Raffles Hotel

The Raffles Hotel ( Chinese : 莱佛士 酒店) is a colonial-style hotel in Singapore that was built in 1887 and is named after the founder of Singapore, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles . It is the flagship of the Raffles International hotel chain and is known for its luxury accommodation and fine dining . The hotel has a tropical courtyard garden, museum and Victorian theater .

history

The Raffles Hotel was founded by the four Armenian brothers Martin, Tigran, Aviet and Arshak Sarkies. They opened a colonial-style bungalow with ten rooms on Beach Road and Bras Basah Road on December 1, 1887. Over the years the hotel has expanded again and again, new wings have been added, the main building has been expanded, a veranda, a ballroom , a bar , billiard room and other buildings and rooms have been added.

The global economic crisis put the Raffles Hotel in financial distress and in 1931 it went bankrupt. In 1933 the difficulties were overcome by the establishment of a public company, Raffles Hotel Ltd. to be overcome. The hotel survived World War II and the Japanese occupation of Singapore unscathed, although it served as a transit camp for prisoners of war towards the end of the war.

In 1987, the Singapore government declared the Raffles Hotel a national monument. In 1989 it was closed for extensive renovation work and reopened on September 16, 1991. With an extension built in a similar style, with new rooms and a shopping arcade, it returned to the glory of bygone days.

particularities

The Raffles Hotel is particularly famous for three things:

  • It is considered to be the place where the last wild tiger in Singapore was killed in August 1902 . Some stories relocate this event to the Long Bar . The Raffles Hotel itself states that it happened under the (raised) Bar & Billiard Room .
  • Ngiam Tong Boon , a house barman, invented the Singapore Sling between 1910 and 1915 .
  • The Raffles and its hotel bar are also famous for the fact that guests are offered fresh peanuts free of charge on the tables. The bowls can simply be thrown on the ground.

Famous guests

These include: Hermann Hesse , Joseph Conrad , Rudyard Kipling , Somerset Maugham , Charlie Chaplin , Jean Harlow , Noël Coward , Ava Gardner , Elizabeth Taylor , Michael Jackson , Queen Elisabeth II.

Web links

Commons : Raffles Hotel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Clark Parkin: Comeback of an Icon, in: GQ Germany March 2020, pp. 118-120.
  2. ↑ http://www.sampedrano.de/hotelwelt/auf-die-nuss-gekommen

Coordinates: 1 ° 17 ′ 40.9 ″  N , 103 ° 51 ′ 16.2 ″  E