InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel

InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel
File:Grand Hôtel Paris, April 2011.jpg InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, showing Café de la Paix facing Place de l'Opéra
General information
Location	Paris, France
Address	2 rue Scribe
Opening	1862
Management	InterContinental Hotels
Design and construction
Architect	Alfred Armand
Developer	Isaac & Émile Pereire
Other information
Number of rooms	470
Number of suites	72
Number of restaurants	2
Website
[1]

The InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel is a historic hotel in Paris, France, opened in 1862.

History

Le Grand Hotel was built by the wealthy brothers Isaac & Émile Pereire and designed by Alfred Armand. Construction began in April 1861 and the hotel was inaugurated on April 5, 1862 by Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, before officially opening on June 30, 1862. The hotel's construction was part of the complete reconstruction of Paris supervised by Baron Haussmann at the time and it was built in the prescribed style, with a mansard roof. Filling an entire triangular city block, the hotel boasted 800 rooms on four floors for guests, with another whole floor for their servants.

File:Visite du Maréchal-Présidente a LL. MM.l'Empereur et l'Empératrice du Brésil, au Grand-Hotel.jpg

President Mac-Mahon visiting the Emperor and the Empress of Brazil, Pedro II and Teresa Cristina, at the Grand Hotel (L'Univers illustré: journal hebdomadaire, nº 1.153, 28/04/1877).

The hotel has hosted royalty throughout its long history, including Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, King Edward VII of England and Queen Rania of Jordan. Victor Hugo hosted parties at the Le Grand Hotel and Émile Zola used the hotel for the setting of the death of his tragic character Nana.

In 1869, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., publisher of the Paris Herald, the forerunner of the International Herald Tribune, met with Henry Morton Stanley in the hotel's Imperial Suite to convince him to make his famous journey to Africa in search of David Livingstone.

File:Paris 9 - Le Grand Hôtel vu de la place Charles-Garnier -151.JPG

The hotel, seen from Place Charles Garnier

The hotel was owned for much of the mid-Twentieth Century by a group that also controlled the Hotel Meurice and the Hotel Prince de Galles. The three hotels were acquired in 1979 by Maxwell Joseph's UK-based Grand Metropolitan Hotels. When Grand Metropolitan acquired Inter-Continental Hotels in 1981, they renamed the hotel Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental Paris. The name has since been modified slightly to InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel.

Café de la Paix

The renowned Café de la Paix has been located on the ground floor of the hotel since it opened.

In Popular Culture

Roman Polanski set much of his 1988 film Frantic, starring Harrison Ford, at the hotel. While the interiors were all filmed at soundstages, numerous exteriors were shot outside the hotel.