WHe whirled through the revolving door and walked across the terrazzo mosaic with the galley in the waves, is in good company: Charles de Gaulle spent his wedding night in this luxury Paris hotel, Charlie Chaplin enjoyed the view of the Eiffel Tower and Serge Gainsbourg improvised on the piano. James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso have also stayed here, and recently two film greats, Isabelle Huppert and Francis Ford Coppola, were able to design suites in the house.

Since the hotel opened in 1910, when it was intended to accommodate wealthy customers for the department store Le Bon Marché, which had been opened opposite by its owner family Boucicaut, “Lutetia” has been written in Roman letters on the Art Nouveau façade above all the big names. It was designed by none other than the sculptor Paul Belmondo, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s father.

The big name obliges

Baptized in the ancient name of Paris, with a ship in the coat of arms like the capital of the Grande Nation, the Lutetia is more than the only palace hotel on the Rive Gauche. It is a national monument, a meeting place for the elite of art and culture yesterday and today – and is reminiscent of the splendor and horror of the twentieth century. When Hitler came to power in the neighboring country, German exiles met in Lutetia under the chairmanship of Heinrich Mann in the anti-fascist “Lutetia Circle”. During the occupation, the Nazi regime made the hotel the headquarters of intelligence and counter-espionage, and immediately after the end of the war it served as accommodation for concentration camp survivors – a small, easily overlooked plaque on an outside wall reminds us of this. If you want to remember this part of history, you should take books with you: Marguerite Duras’ memoirs “The Pain” or the more recent novel “Lutetia’s Secrets” by Pierre Assouline.

The burden of the past – as they should feel – is lifted from today’s guests as soon as they enter the light-flooded entrance hall and a friendly monsieur like Bernard takes their luggage: The concierge has been working at the Lutetia for 32 years. The fact that employees like him remain loyal to the establishment, even after the number of staff was increased from 280 to 420 as part of a fundamental redesign of the establishment, underlines its status as an institution. It cannot rest on its merits: Shortly before the pandemic paralyzed tourism, the Lutetia – now owned by the Israeli real estate group Alrov – had reopened after a four-year, two-hundred-million-euro renovation led by interior architect and designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte . The house has only been able to show itself confidently in new splendor since the Covid crisis has been overcome – and it is doing so. “I’m sorry, we’re fully booked,” the receptionist tells a caller on the phone.