Inside the historic hotels that became destinations in their own right
There’s something surreal about strolling century-old ironwood balconies where the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Charlie Chaplin and Elizabeth Taylor have also stepped. These names, and others, can be found on door plaques at several of the suites at Raffles Singapore, named for the hotel’s most illustrious guests.
Raffles Singapore is in a class of storied luxury hotels intrinsically tied to the city they reside in, offering something increasingly rare: the opportunity not just to visit history, but to spend the night within it.
Inside Raffles Singapore, hallways double as a museum, housing the grand piano played by the likes of Elton John and playwright Noël Coward, while a “walk of fame” gallery of photographs showcases guests from Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth II to Ava Gardner and Pablo Neruda.
The hotel is perhaps best known, however, as the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, said to have been invented by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon in 1915.
“Part of the conservativeness of the British Empire is that ladies weren’t supposed to drink in public,” explains Roslee Sukar, Resident Historian at Raffles Singapore. “He [the bartender] created it to look very much like a nice fruit drink.”
The Ritz Paris is another global name associated with writers and artists, and Ernest Hemingway was a regular at its bar. When Paris was liberated from the Nazi occupation of WWII, during which Hemingway was a war correspondent, it’s said he arrived at the bar with a jeep, gun and band of fighters, ready to liberate the Ritz from the Germans – but the manager told him they had already left. Hemingway proceeded to run up a bar tab for 51 dry martinis.
A similar clientele of artists, along with entertainers and world leaders, frequented The Plaza Hotel, a landmark for New York since the jazz age. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald famously often visited The Plaza in the 1920s, once jumping into its fountain, and Fitzgerald set The Great Gatsby’s climactic scene there.
The Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, meanwhile, has been an epicentre of glamour for a century. Its annual Copa Ball, started in 1924, remains Carnival’s most glamorous event, and over the years performers like Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf have taken to the stage at its former casino.
Luxury hotel brands understand that a property with a rich heritage like this can’t be replicated. In Venice, the Four Seasons has recently reopened Hotel Danieli as the Danieli, Venezia, A Four Seasons Hotel, after a three-year restoration (which included hand-painted gilding on the lobby’s magnificent ceiling).
Set across three buildings – the oldest a 14th-century palazzo – Danieli used to be a stop on the 19th-century Grand Tour. Its guests ranged from John Ruskin, an English writer who worked on The Stones of Venice, to French author George Sand, who wrote there while conducting a turbulent affair with poet Alfred de Musset.
For those interested in spending a night within its centuries-old walls, a lagoon view suite ranges from about $2500 to $12,000, depending on season and availability.
