The Peninsula Paris, Luxury hotel in 16th arrondissement, France
The Peninsula Paris occupies a multi-story building at 19 avenue Kléber, with a pale stone facade, a dark grey mansard roof and rows of rectangular windows with dark-railed balconies. The lower level has large arched windows and a wide entrance under a canopy with a crisscross pattern. Two rounded roof sections sit at the top left and right.
A palace built for Russian nobleman Alexander Basilewski in 1864 stood here until 1904, when Queen Isabella II of Spain died in it. Hotel magnate Leonard Tauber demolished it and had architect Armand Sibien build the Hotel Majestic, which opened in December 1908. The French state bought it in 1936 for the Ministry of Defence; from 1946 to 1958 it housed the provisional UNESCO headquarters, and it reopened as The Peninsula Paris in August 2014.
The hotel's name recalls the former Hôtel Majestic, opened in 1908, where on 18 May 1922 Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev dined at the same table, celebrating the premiere of Diaghilev's ballet Renard. George Gershwin wrote An American in Paris there in 1928. The building later hosted the 1973 Paris peace talks between Lê Đức Thọ and Henry Kissinger.
The hotel stands at 19, avenue Kléber in the 16th arrondissement, one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe, a short walk from the Champs-Élysées. The building is listed as a monument historique, and its facade is carved from Saint-Leu-la-Forêt stone, with sculpted bouquets visible on the exterior.
The hotel's salon organ was later sold and reinstalled in the church of Saint-Michel des Batignolles. George Gershwin wrote An American in Paris during a 1928 stay, and David Ogilvy worked in the kitchens in 1931–1932 after failing his Oxford exams.
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