Hotels Greta Garbo Has Stayed At

Afternoon tea beneath The Palm Court’s soaring stained-glass dome gives The Plaza Hotel its clearest expression: formal, theatrical, and deeply attached to New York tradition. Architect Thierry Despont’s renovation drew on nearby Central Park, bringing ceiling-high palms, trellis details, and cane-accented furnishings into a room that has been part of the hotel since 1907. Outside, Fifth Avenue meets Central Park South; inside, restored reception rooms and elaborate guest-room finishes sustain the sense of occasion. The 282 rooms and suites include guest rooms with sitting areas, mosaic bathroom floors, and gold-plated Sherle Wagner fixtures, while the Legacy Suites introduce commissioned art and a more contemporary residential style. It’s a hotel whose public spaces deserve as much attention as its bedrooms.

Three restaurants sharing six Michelin stars make dining central to the identity of Four Seasons Hotel George V Paris. Christian Le Squer’s modern French cooking at Le Cinq anchors the lineup, while Le George takes an Italian-Mediterranean direction and L’Orangerie serves seasonal menus beneath a glass canopy overlooking the marble courtyard. The setting carries equal weight: a 1928 Art Deco landmark in the Golden Triangle, just off the Champs-Élysées. Inside, La Galerie’s collection of 19th-century art and the Parisian Suites’ classical or Empire-style works give the hotel a distinctly formal character. Some suites open onto terraces with Eiffel Tower views, adding a broader Paris panorama to a stay centered on art and the table.

Seventeenth-century furniture and artworks collected by hotelier Emile Wolf still shape Hotel Lancaster’s character today. Housed in an 1889 private mansion on rue de Berri, steps from the Champs-Élysées, the hotel retains the residential spirit of the house Wolf converted in 1925. Antiques sit alongside contemporary pieces by Studio Jean Philippe Nuel, with individually decorated rooms extending that eclectic approach upstairs. Downstairs, Monsieur Lancaster serves neo-bistro cooking built around ingredients from small local producers, with dishes designed for sharing. CopperBay brings its cocktail-making expertise to the bar. Together, these spaces give the Lancaster a character rooted as much in the pleasures of a Parisian household as in its century of hotelkeeping.

Royal blue in the lobby, a grand staircase and rooms furnished with silks and antique art give the Ritz Paris its richly layered character. César Ritz chose a private mansion on Place Vendôme for the hotel he opened in 1898; he and his wife, Marie-Louise, approached it as a vast private home, mixing periods and French decorative traditions. That residential idea still gives shape to a stay, from individually styled accommodations to the wood-paneled Salon Proust, where books and armchairs frame afternoon tea. Outside, the Grand Jardin extends the hotel’s sequence of salons into greenery, with magnolias, a fountain and wooden alcoves along a trellis gallery.