Le Grand Hôtel was built by the wealthy brothers Isaac & Émile Pereire and designed by Alfred Armand, who had previously designed the nearby Grand Hôtel du Louvre for them. Construction began in April 1861; the hotel was inaugurated on 5 May 1862 by Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, before officially opening on 30 June 1862.[2][1] 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.[2]
Creditors of the Péreire brothers seized the hotel in 1878, and in 1887, André Million formed Société du Grand Hôtel to manage Le Grand Hotel, along with the nearby Hotel Meurice and later the Hotel Prince de Galles.[1] The Italian CIGA Hotels chain acquired the three hotels in 1972.[4]
CIGA sold the hotels in 1978 for $25million to Limnico, a Liberia-based subsidiary of Roger Tamraz's First Arabian Corporation.[5][6] Limnico resold the properties for $55million just a year later, in October 1979, to Maxwell Joseph's UK-based Grand Metropolitan Hotels.[4][7] Grand Metropolitan acquired the Inter-Continental Hotels chain in 1981, and placed Le Grand Hotel under their management. The hotel was renovated between 1985 and 1990 by noted French designer Pierre-Yves Rochon.[8]
In 1986, the hotel was renamed Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental Paris.[9] The hotel closed in December 2001 for another major renovation.[8] Inter-Continental Hotels was reorganised as InterContinental Hotels Group while the hotel was closed. It reopened on 5 April 2003,[8] with its name modified slightly, as InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel. InterContinental sold the hotel to Qatar-based Constellation Hotels in 2014 for €330 million, although InterContinental continues to manage the property.[10]
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
Jean-Luc Godard filmed large portions of his 1965 sci-fi film Alphaville in the hotel, using its driveway, lobby, elevators, hallways and winter garden. Roman Polanski set much of his 1988 film Frantic, starring Harrison Ford, at the hotel. Most interiors were filmed on soundstages, but numerous exterior scenes were filmed outside the hotel.
The 9th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as le neuvième.
The Carlton Cannes, a Regent Hotel is a historic 332-room luxury hotel opened in 1911, located at 58 La Croisette in Cannes on the French Riviera. It is famous for hosting movie stars from around the world during the annual Film Festival. Following major renovations, it reopened on 13 March 2023.
The Pullman Paris Montparnasse Hotel is a skyscraper hotel in the Montparnasse quarter, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, France. It is part of the Vandamme Nord mixed use complex, which is currently known by the commercial name Les Ateliers Gaîté. With 957 rooms, it is the third-largest hotel in Paris after the Le Méridien Étoile and the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile, and one of the French capital's major convention venues.
Émile Pereire and his brother Isaac Pereire were major figures in the development of France's finance and infrastructure during the Second French Empire. The Pereire brothers challenged the dominance of the Rothschilds in continental European finance, known at the time as haute finance. Their attempt was temporarily successful, and even though it collapsed in the late 1860s, it contributed to a more developed and vibrant economic landscape. Like the Rothschilds, the Pereires were Jews, but unlike them, they were Sephardi of Portuguese origin.
The Louvre Saint-Honoré building is a historic structure in Paris, occupying an entire urban block between the rue de Rivoli, the place du Palais-Royal, the rue Saint-Honoré, and the rue de Marengo, with a total floor surface of 47,000 square meters. It was originally erected in the early 1850s by the Pereire brothers who in 1855 opened an iconic hotel, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, and an innovative street-level department store, branded from 1863 the Grands Magasins du Louvre. While the Grand Hôtel closed in 1887, the Grands Magasins expanded and kept operating in the building until 1974. From 1978 to 2016 they were succeeded by a specialized mall of antiques shops, the Louvre des Antiquaires, while the upper floors were repurposed as rented office space. Since 2020, the building's lower levels have been undergoing conversion to become the new flagship home of the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain.
The Café de la Paix is a famous café located on the northwest corner of the intersection of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Place de l'Opéra, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, France. Designed in the Napoleon III style by the architect Alfred Armand, who also designed the historic Grand-Hôtel in which the café is located, its florid interior decorations, historic location, and high-profile clientele have all brought it international recognition as a site of great cultural significance.
Le Meurice is a Brunei-owned five-star luxury hotel in the 1st arrondissement of Paris opposite the Tuileries Garden, between Place de la Concorde and the Musée du Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli. From the Rue de Rivoli, it stretches to the Rue du Mont Thabor. The hotel was opened in 1815. It received the "Palace" distinction from the French government in 2011. Le Meurice is owned and operated by the Dorchester Collection, a luxury hotel operator based in London. The hotel has a staff of over 400 and houses 160 rooms decorated in the Louis XVI style, which start at US$1,235 per night.
Yves Jeuland is a French author and director of documentary films, best known for his archival and direct cinema films.
Le Salon Indien du Grand Café was a room in the basement of the Grand Café, on the Boulevard des Capucines near the Place de l'Opéra in the center of Paris. It is notable for being the place that hosted the first commercial public film screening by the Lumière brothers, on December 28, 1895. The ten short films on the program, were:
La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon, 46 seconds
La Voltige, 46 seconds
La Pêche aux poissons rouges, 42 seconds
Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon, 48 seconds
Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
Le Jardinier , 49 seconds
Repas de bébé, 41 seconds
Le Saut à la couverture, 41 seconds
La Places des Cordeliers à Lyon, 44 seconds
La Mer , 38 seconds
Jean Champion was a French film actor. He appeared in 60 films between 1962 and 1996.
Le Splendid is a café-théâtre company founded in Paris by a collection of writers and actors in the 1970s: Christian Clavier, Michel Blanc, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte, Josiane Balasko, Marie-Anne Chazel, Bruno Moynot and Claire Magnin. The members of the company went on to become some of the most significant actors and directors in French cinema from the 1980s onwards and have collectively won many César Awards.
Groupe du Louvre or Louvre Hotel Group is a French company operating several hotel brands with over 1700 locations headquartered in La Défense in Nanterre, France.
François-Désiré Froment-Meurice was a French goldsmith, working in a free and naturalistic manner in the tradition of Mannerist and Baroque masters. One version of his Coupe des Vendanges, the "Harvest Cup", made in 1844, is conserved at the Musée du Louvre.
Jules Berry was a French actor.
La France was a daily financial newspaper in the 19th century. Founded in August 1862 by Arthur de La Guéronnière, the newspaper originally followed an editorial line that reconciled loyalty to Napoleon III with the reaffirmation of the temporal power of the Pope. It was bought in 1874 by Émile de Girardin, founder of the famous newspaper La Presse and a longtime collaborator of La Guéronnière.
During the Second French Empire, the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (1852–1870), Paris was the largest city in continental Europe and a leading center of finance, commerce, fashion, and the arts. The population of the city grew dramatically, from about one million to two million persons, partly because the city was greatly enlarged, to its present boundaries, through the annexation of eleven surrounding communes and the subsequent creation of eight new arrondissements.
Jean Eugène Ritt was a French actor and theatre director.
Pierre Renart is a French designer and cabinetmaker, who studied carpentry at the École Boulle in Paris. Among his best-known designs are the Genesis and Ribbon Collections.
The Bank of Savoy was a bank of issue of the Kingdom of Sardinia, established in 1851 and based in Annecy and Chambéry. As a consequence of France's annexation of the former Duchy of Savoy under the Treaty of Turin (1860), the Bank of Savoy ceded its money-issuance role to the Bank of France in 1865.
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