Hotel de Crillon

Executive summary by Darmansjah

The Hôtel de Crillon in Paris is a historic luxury hotel opened in 1909 in a building dating to 1758. The hotel is located at the foot of the Champs-Élysées and is one of two identical stone palaces on the Place de la Concorde. The Crillon has 103 guest rooms and 44 suites. It also has three restaurants, a bar, outdoor terrace, gym and health club on the premises. It is closed for renovation until 2015.

The building that is now the Crillon was constructed in 1758 after King Louis XV commissioned the architect Jaques-Ange Gabriel to build two palaces in what would become the Place de Concorde. The two identical buildings, separated by the rue Royale, were initially designed to be government offices of the French state. The eastern building remains to this day the headquarters of the French Navy, the Royale. The northern building that would become the Crillon was first occupied by Louis Marie Augustin, Duke of Aurmont, a famous patron of the French Arts. The building was further enhanced by its second owner, the architect Louis-François Trouard, who had the Salon de Aigles built in 1775.

On 6 February 1778, the building was used as the venue for the official signing of the first treaties between the newly founded United States and France. Americans Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee met French diplomat Conrad Alexandre Gérard de Rayneval to conclude the French-American treaty that recognised the Declaration of Independence of the United States and a trade agreement.

In 1788 the Count of Crillon, François-Félix-Dorothee Berton des Balbes, acquired the building for his home. But it was confiscated shortly thereafter by the government of the French Revolution in 1791. Two years later King Louis XVI was guillotined in the Place de la Concorde directly in front of the building in 1793.

Eventually the building was returned to its owner whose descendants lived there for more than a century. In 1907, the Société du Louvre purchased the property and transformed it into a hotel. The building then underwent a two-year refurbishment under the supervision of noted architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur. Two neighbouring buildings on the rue Boissy d'Anglas were purchased to enlarge the property. The new Hotel Crillon opened on 12 March 1909.

The hotel housed members of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, including President Wilson’s key advisor Edward House.

Hotel Carlton Inter-Continental

Executive summary by Darmansjah

The InterContinental Carlton Cannes is a 343-room luxury hotel built in 1911, located at 58 La Croisette in Cannes on the French Riviera and listed by the Government of France as a National Historic Building. During the Cannes Film Festival it is the most prestigious place to stay and the undisputed headquarters of motion picture industry deal-making.

Part of the InterContinental chain, the Carlton is famous for hosting movie stars from around the world during the annual Film Festival. The hotel was also featured in Elton John's well-known 1983 music video for the single, "I'm Still Standing", and the exterior and interior features in New Order's 1993 music video for the single, "World (The Price of Love)". More famously, the hotel was a central location for the Alfred Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. In 1970 it featured in the Peter Sellers/ Goldie Hawn comedy "There's a Girl in my Soup" and exterior scenes were filmed at the entrance to the hotel and on the hotel beach. The hotel lobby scene and interior scenes were done on a film set.

 

While staying at the Hotel Carlton during the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, Academy Award winning movie star Grace Kelly had an arranged meeting and photo shoot with Prince Rainier III of Monaco; they married in 1956.

The Carlton's distinctive domes on both seaward corners were reputedly designed to resemble the breasts of Caroline Otero ("La Belle Otero") the most famous courtesan of the French Riviera during the years surrounding World War I. The Carlton's elegant seventh floor formal dining room was named La Belle Otero in her honour. There are a couple of restaurants : the Carlton Restaurant on the ground floor and the Carlton Beach Restaurant.

Sylvie Nissen gallery in the lobby of the Carlton Hotel was established in 1980, has collection of French artist René Gruau.

Hostellerie de Crillon le Brave

Executive summary by Darmansjah

Crillon-le-Brave is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.

Like many of the older villages in the region, it was built on a hilltop for defensive purposes, and to provide more farmland on the plains below. It is a very small town, with only one paved road running through the middle. It contains little more than a café, a hotel, a restaurant, a church, and a school.

The origins of the village date back to Roman times, when it went by the name Crillonium, and later Crillon, but one could say that its modern history begins in the 14th century when a leading Avignon family acquired the feudal rights to the village. A long line of dukes ruled Crillon throughout the period leading up to the French Revolution.

The village takes its full name of Crillon-le-Brave from the most legendary of its dukes: Louis des Balbes de Berton de Crillon or "Le Brave Crillon" (1541–1615) was one of Henri IV's fiercest and most valiant generals during the French Wars of Religion in the late 16th century. The same Crillon family also gave its name to the famous Hôtel de Crillon in Paris.

Like most of the buildings surrounding the church at the top of the village, the houses that form the core of the Hostellerie have their origins in the 16th and 17th centuries and played an important part in village life. 

The Maison Roche was originally the presbytère - the priest's home, and at the same time the village school.

At the end of the 19th century Crillon-le-Brave was a prosperous village of 800 inhabitants served by several cafés, bars and stores. There was even a local philharmonic society. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the village began a long slow decline. Two wars and a failing water supply left the village almost abandoned and many of its houses fell into ruins. But since the early 1970s new inhabitants have brought new life to the old stones, so that today Crillon-le-Brave has once again become a lively village.