Looking for legends—along with bed and board? Across the Middle
East, a handful of exceptional hotels has retained the magic of a
bygone era while still offering the care and comforts that attract
experienced travelers. Some of the best of them can boast histories
going back 100 years or more.
These hostelries have cosseted the likes of Agatha Christie, T.E.
Lawrence and Winston Churchill. Presidents and potentates stay there
still, but so do ordinary travelers with a taste for peace and patina.
From Morocco in the west to Turkey, the Levant and Egypt, many of
these hotels have undertaken renovations and additions that demonstrate
their owners' confidence in the future of tourism and business travel
throughout the region. Indeed, properties in the region are "fighting
for market share with highly customized design and services,"
notes the trade magazine Hotels, "and the 'historical' hotels
are holding their own against stiff competition from newer, often
larger, properties."
The Middle East's early luxury hotels grew up in the second half of
the 1800's along routes opened by railroads and steamships. Focusing
first on Palestine and Egypt, tourism pioneers such as Thomas Cook
both stimulated and satisfied European fascination with the region.
Often, world politics and economics combined to cement the importance
of the hotels, which served tourists and statesmen alike.
Some guests, like Churchill, left behind objects that are now treasured
mementos. Of others, all that remains is a signature in a dusty guest
book, and sometimes a hint of intrigue or mystery.
Lawrence, for example, sojourned at the then-stately Baron's Hotel
in Aleppo, in northern Syria, in April 1914. He said he was studying
the ruins at Carchemish, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, but
some believe he was already spying for Britain, before moving on to
help raise the Arab revolt against the Turks in the Arabian Peninsula
during World War I.
Christie began traveling to the Middle East in the late 1920's. (See
Aramco World, July/August 1990.) She wrote part of Murder on the Orient
Express at Istanbul's Pera Palace Hotel. In Syria, she stayed at Baron's,
as well as at the Reine Zenobia Hotel in Palmyra. In Egypt, she visited
the Winter Palace in Luxor and the Cataract Hotel in Aswan, incorporating
what she saw at the Cataract in Death on the Nile.
Churchill checked into the Cataract for the inauguration of the first
Aswan Dam in 1902. But the Mamounia Hotel in
Marrakech, Morocco, where he painted scenes of the Atlas Mountains
from his balcony, was his favorite, and he returned there frequently
until the 1950's. He even brought Franklin Roosevelt to the hotel
after the Casablanca Conference early in 1943, both of them mud-splattered
after their car broke down en route. Today, Churchill's homburg and
umbrella hang in a luxurious suite that bears his name, and the hotel
displays in the lobby the silver tea service he used.
Opened in 1922 by the Moroccan national railroad company, the Mamounia
was renovated and redecorated in 1986 with a daring mix of twenties
Art Deco and such traditional Moroccan features as intricately carved
plaster and zillij tilework. The hotel is just a 10-minute walk from
the city's bustling ancient markets and Djemaa el-Fna, Marrakech's
raucous main square (See Aramco World, July/August 1993), but inside
the Mamounia's rose-colored walls, the watchword is "peace,"
says Najib Mountasir, assistant hotel director.
The hotel's 13 hectares (32 acres) of gardens give substance to his
words and link the hotel to the city's past. In the 18th century,
Sultan Sidi Muhammad gave these gardens to his son Mamoun as a wedding
gift. The ruler's three other sons were also given gardens in the
city, but today only Mamoun's gardens remain, generously planted with
palms, olives, Seville oranges and flowering plants.
The hotel, where heavy-scented damask roses are scattered in the fountains
every morning, has long been a favorite of artists as well as politicians.
Maurice Ravel, whose piano still graces the lobby, found inspiration
in the music of a Gnaoua troupe at Djemaa el-Fna when he stayed here
in 1935. Some six decades later, members of the rock group Led Zeppelin
signed the register while in town to mix their rhythms with the Gnaoua's
for an "MTV Unplugged" concert. When Ronald Reagan stayed
in 1991, the hotel arranged an expert briefing on Arabian horses.
Yasser Arafat praised the "warm welcome" he received when
he signed the guest book in 1992.
The welcome is also warm—even resonant—at the
Palais Jamaï Hotel, some 280 kilometers
(175 miles) to the north, in Fez. Now a sister hotel of the Mamounia,
the Palais Jamaï is perched on the rim of the bowl-shaped valley
that contains the madinah, or old city. Besides this world-class historic
panorama, the hotel also has one of the most thrilling of all wake-up
calls: The dawn call to prayer gathers volume from one after another
of the mosques of the city below, floats up to the hotel—Prayer
is better than sleep!"—and draws guests to their balconies
to watch the millennial madinah stirring from its slumbers.
The Palais Jamaï opened in 1933 in what had been the palatial
residence of two wealthy brothers of the Ouled Jamaï family.
Government ministers during the reign of Sultan Moulay Hassan, they
lost their opulent estate—and one lost his life—after
falling from favor after the death of the sultan early this century.
Built in 1879, the palace was "the gem of the quarter,"
says a hotel history. Its architectural legacy includes two high-ceilinged
suites with intricate, hand-crafted woodwork, elaborately carved plaster
and glazed tiles. Along with a similarly decorated restaurant, they
form the heart of today's 119-room hotel and set the theme for the
decor of a six-story addition that opened in 1970.
The hotel is preserving its own and the country's heritage by using
local craftsmen for the renovation scheduled to be completed this
fall, explains spokesman Abdelkader Chattabi. "In Fez, with just
a little difficulty, we can still find people who are qualified to
build in the old style," he says. "The hotel is a living
symbol of the continuity of our history and culture."
Guest Gottfreid Zantke, chief architect of the city of Bremen, Germany,
agrees. "Craftsmanship hasn't been replaced by kitsch,"
he says. "Here you see handicrafts, with all their irregularities,
rather than the mindless reproduction of earlier models."
In Istanbul, too, it's a railroad—or at least
a rail travel company—that created the city's noblest old hotel.
The Pera Palace opened in 1892
specifically to serve passengers of the deluxe Paris-to-Istanbul Orient
Express. The firm that ran the trains also owned the hotel, and so
the old lion-and-laurel logo of the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits et des
Grands Express Européens is preserved today.
In those early days, porters carried pampered guests on cushioned
chairs from the train station at Sirkeci, in Istanbul's old city,
to the rowboat landing on the Golden Horn. On the other side of the
inlet, in the "European" quarter, Pera, guests caught an
electric undergroynd funicular train for a 70-second ride to the hotel.
Today's Pera Palace Hotel exists thanks to the efforts of one man,
Hasan Süzer, who came to its rescue in 1977. "It was in
very bad condition when I took over," he says. "It was not
even listed as a hotel in the documents of the Ministry of Tourism."
Süzer says his company, the Istanbul Hotel and Tourism Association,
has spent some $2.5 million on renovations. He's promoted the hotel
by publicizing its well-known guests: 27 of its 145 rooms bear bronze
plaques with the names of famous visitors, including the father of
the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Agatha Christie,
the glamorous spy Mata Hari and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. After
losing money for five years, Süzer says, the hotel is now turning
a profit and is full in the spring and summer.
Süzer's company leases the property from three vakifs, or charitable
foundations, which were willed the hotel's income by its Lebanese
previous owner, Misbah Muhayyes. Süzer's motivation was to save
the hotel as a living monument. "The Pera Palace was a link between
Europe and Asia," he explains. "The people who stayed here
were traveling from one continent to the other, and Istanbul was the
edge of Europe for all of them."
To keep the flavor of the original hotel, Süzer's company purchased
its old furnishings from the Muhayyes family. While the rooms have
been modernized, their hardwood floors, brass beds, hand-woven carpets
and vast bathrooms reflect a more expansive past, and that reflection,
Süzer says, is what the Pera Palace has to offer that its modern,
five-star competitors do not. "The parents or grandparents of
some of our clients stayed here," he points out, "and that's
why they continue to come."
Agatha Christie's Room 404 is a mini-museum, but Atatürk's, No.
101, is the biggest drawing card for local visitors. The chamber features
original furniture and such memorabilia as the revered Turkish president's
driving goggles and his Panama hat. Busloads of wide-eyed schoolchildren
are often among the visitors.
Christie also turns up in Aleppo, a stop on another
important luxury rail service—Wagons-Lits' Taurus Express. There,
she frequented the Baron's Hotel.
Perhaps she found it fascinating because an earlier guest, T.E. Lawrence,
might have been leading a double life there. Was Lawrence, the archeologist
and scholar, in fact engaged in espionage?
"Spying was the fashion then. Everyone was sort of mixing archeology
and espionage, and public relations and diplomacy, all at the same
time," says Armen Mazloumian, the Baron's manager, whose grandfather
and great-uncle founded the hotel in 1909. Regardless of what Lawrence
was really up to, he's held in high esteem at the hotel, where a copy
of his signed bill is preserved in a glass case in the faded lounge.
No one alive at the Baron's today remembers Lawrence. But that's not
true of Christie, who signed the guest book in 1934. (See Aramco World,
May/June 1997.) The register is kept by Mazloumian's mother, Sally,
a Briton who married Baron's owner Krikor Mazloumian after World War
II. "[Christie] came back to the hotel constantly, and my husband
knew her very well. He often found her sitting on the terrace, bundled
up against the cold, scribbling away," says Mrs. Mazloumian,
who also became friends with the author.
The three-story, 40-room hotel once lay in the midst of gardens, with
a view of the city's old markets and its ancient citadel. Along with
Lawrence and Christie, guests included writer and traveler Freya Stark,
King Faysal of Syria, Charles Lindbergh, British spy Kim Philby and
financier David Rockefeller. Now, the gardens have been replaced by
ordinary commercial buildings, and the disappearance of luxury trains
and the advent of bigger, newer hotels have cut into the number of
guests. Despite these harder times, however, the hotel is renovating
several of its huge, old-fashioned rooms, and the Mazloumians have
rejected offers to sell it. "Nightclubs and discos would ruin
it," says Armen Mazloumian.
Nostalgia and character are the Baron's two key attractions today,
Sally Mazloumian says. Elizabeth Todd, a guest from Cambridge, England,
concurred. "I like it here," she said. "It's a little
like staying in the British Museum."
One of the suitors of Baron's Hotel has been the Damascus-based Orient
Travel and Tours Company, which in 1991 bought the rundown Reine Zenobia
Hotel in Palmyra, in central Syria, renovated it and shortened its
name to plain "Zenobia."
Built on the edge of the Palmyra's Roman-era ruins, the Zenobia was
established in 1924 as a rest house for oil workers traveling to Baghdad
by bus, says hotel manager Hani Malek. Five years later, the French
baroness d'Andurin acquired the property and transformed it into the
Reine Zenobia, after the Palmyran queen who challenged the rule of
the Roman Empire—and was finally crushed in the year 274.
"The hotel has a very, very good position," says Malek,
gesturing through new glass lobby doors to the stone skeleton of the
ancient city that begins just a few meters away. "The government
no longer allows construction so close to the ruins."
In 1936, the hotel passed into the hands of a local family named Essad.
But Baroness d'Andurin left her own idiosyncratic legacy. "She
liked to dress up as Queen Zenobia herself, and she liked to watch
hotel guests in the lobby from a small window in her room," says
Malek. Today, her old room is a bi-level suite and the hotel, which
declined rapidly after she left, bustles again with busloads of guests
from Damascus.
Among European travelers to the Middle East, Palestine has long been
a focus, since Jerusalem is sacred to Christians as well as to Muslims
and Jews. The 95-room American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem,
just a few hundred meters north of the Old City, started life early
this century. The hotel got its name from a small group of Americans
from Chicago who put down roots in Jerusalem's Old City in the late
1800's. Led by members of the wealthy Spafford family, who came to
seek solace in good works after several personal tragedies, the group
had not intended to run a hotel. But the "American colony"
rented as a residence the mansion of an Arab landowner named Rabbah
al-Husseini, who died without male heirs in the 1890's. And in 1902,
a Jaffa hotelier named Ustinov asked them to put up guests of his
hotel who were visiting Jerusalem. Over time, the residence evolved
into a wintertime hostel for tourists and Christian pilgrims who traveled
inland from the coastal ports, and then into the American Colony Hotel,
one of the city's most sophisticated, with a mix of guests from throughout
the region and around the world.
Since 1980, a Swiss company has managed the hotel—now known
locally as "The Colony"—although it is still owned
by descendants of the colonists. The pasha's original large bedroom
is, appropriately, Room One, and the domed "court room"
opposite is used for concerts, parties and conferences.
The Colony reestablished a tie with the past when British actor and
writer Sir Peter Ustinov visited in 1995 and planted a palm tree to
replace one of two that his grandfather, the Jaffa hotel owner, had
originally provided for the courtyard. "I think this hotel is
remarkable," Ustinov was quoted as saying, adding that people
of diverse backgrounds "have always been able to come here and
discuss whatever they wished. It's an extraordinary place...even at
the height of the most difficult situations."
Egypt's oldest top-notch hotel, the Mena House Oberoi in Giza,
also has roots in the 1800's. Built in the
shadow of the Great Pyramids as a hunting lodge for Egypt's ruler,
Khedive Ismail, it was enlarged to house Princess Eugenie of France
when she visited Egypt to open the Suez Canal in 1869. (See Aramco
World, September/October 1975.) In the 1880's, English owners dubbed
it the Mena House, after the pharaoh who first united Egypt. New owners
turned it into a hotel in the 1890's, installing mosaics and mashrabiyyah
(traditional wooden window grilles) and outfitting the rooms with
balconies and other luxuries.
At first, horse-drawn coaches linked the hotel to Cairo, which lay
some 15 kilometers (nine miles) away across open farmland. When Cairo
laid the tracks for its electric streetcars in the early part of this
century, one line ran west from the Nile to the Mena House. In World
War I, the hotel became a military hospital, and its extensive grounds
hosted an Australian cavalry unit.
Wealthy travelers flocked back to the Mena House in the 1920's and
1930's. Even Prince (later King) Farouk liked to drop by. Once, says
the hotel history, the manager discovered the prince in the kitchen
"enjoying a beef sandwich which he had just made himself"
after a late-night drive.
The Oberoi hotel group of India took over management of Mena House
in the early 1970's. In the extensive renovations that followed, workers
discovered a room piled high with original 19th-century furnishings.
These were restored and placed in the lavishly decorated suites.
Over the years, metropolitan Cairo has steadily crept toward the Mena
House's gates. But the 520-room hotel, which boasts a golf course
and gardens, remains a restful outpost. In 1990, it completed a new
business and conference center. "We're not old in quality or
service, but old in history," says spokesman Atef Goubran, adding
that the hotel is especially popular among families from the Arabian
Gulf.
Also in Cairo—but quite different from the resort-like
Mena House—is the Nile Hilton. The
hotel has hosted stars like Jane Russell and Frank Sinatra, but key
clients today are waves of buttoned-down business travelers attracted
by its central location and commercial services, says manager Armin
Schrocker.
That location—in the heart of modern Cairo, next door to the
Egyptian Museum—makes it a gateway into Egypt's business and
cultural heart. But Schrocker adds that the hotel is also "a
door to the world for people in Cairo." And Cairenes have adopted
the hotel with gusto. It hosts a remarkable 300 weddings a year, says
public-relations manager Hoda El Maghraby, some of them "second-generation"
weddings, as children follow in their parents' footsteps.
Built on the east bank of the Nile where an English army barracks
once stood, the 433-room hotel has an unusual pedigree: The brainchild
of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, it was inaugurated in 1959
by Nasser and president Josif Broz Tito of Yugoslavia—at the
time both leaders of the generally socialist non-aligned nations movement—and
by Conrad Hilton, pillar and epitome of American capitalism. The property
is a landmark because of its "strong affinity with local people"
and because it was the first hotel in Egypt built "by a public-sector
co"mpany in a management agreement with a foreign company,"
says Schröcker. Since then, numerous deluxe hotels have risen
in Egypt and elsewhere that are operated on the same pattern: some
form of government ownership, management by a private, foreign corporation,
and locally-hired staff.
"Nasser wanted the hotel to be a showcase, something to show
off to foreign visitors," Schrocker says. But despite its spacious
rooms, each with a balcony, the Nile Hilton hasn't been able to rest
on its laurels. A sharp business downturn in the early 1990's left
many rooms empty and sparked fierce competition. The hotel replied
with a renovation program that included the creation of executive
floors and new decor for suites. One, the Thomas Cook Suite, complements
such late-20th-century comforts as a Jacuzzi with accouterments of
the 19th-century Grand Tour traveler—including high-top boots
and leather toiletry kit—and rents for a cool $1,400 a night.
The hotel has also been a leader in training its Egyptian staff. A
number of local employees have risen through the ranks to become Hilton
executives. Ahmed el-Nahas, for example, was hired as a headwaiter
at the Nile Hilton in 1962, and became Hilton International's vice-president
for the Middle East and Africa. Other former Hilton employees play
significant roles in the hospitality industry in Egypt, Syria and
Lebanon.
Tami Daoud of the Egyptian Hotel Association calls the Nile Hilton
"a pride and a treasure for Egypt, along with our monuments and
museums." It ranks, she says, "among the special hotels
that speak, 'I am Egypt!'"
At the 136-room Old Cataract in Aswan,
guests can still find their way around using Agatha Christie's thriller
Death on the Nile as a guide. Only the name has been slightly changed—it
was "The Cataract" in her day—to distinguish the original
building from a 1963 addition. Like the Winter Palace in Luxor, the
Old Cataract has adopted the strategy of physically separating its
more modern facilities, such as 24-hour coffee shops, from its historical
heart; also like the Winter Palace, it is managed by Sofitel, the
hospitality arm of the Paris-based Accor group. The original part
of the hotel underwent major renovations in 1986.
The Cataract opened in 1899 on the site of a British military training
mission, overlooking the southernmost section of the beautiful, boulder-strewn
Nile rapids just north of the Sudanese border. Although the first
Aswan Dam, just upstream from the hotel, tamed the rapids, the hotel
lost none of its charm.
"The Old Cataract has a unique historical background as well
as a historic view," says hotel manager Hesham Youssef. "The
rooms on the river side aren't just facing the Nile, they're practically
in the Nile." The secluded, club-like atmosphere adds to the
hostelry's intimacy with the river.
The Old Cataract has hosted "most of the world's presidents,"
adds Youssef. French President François Mittérand was
a regular winter guest; though very ill, he returned to the hotel
in December 1995, just a few days before his death.
The Winter Palace, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the
north in Luxor, opened in 1886. It
was built under the supervision of Thomas Cook for the exclusive use
of Egypt's royalty and nobility. Later opened to the public, it still
attracted royalty—King Farouk kept a permanent suite there—and
the yachting classes. Today, the hotel is the gateway to the trove
of pharaonic monuments clustered at Thebes, once the capital of ancient
Egypt. Its Nile-side rooms and broad first-floor terrace offer splendid
views of the river and its west bank—pharaonic Egypt's most
important burial ground. When a frequent guest at the hotel, archeologist
Howard Carter, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922, it was
on the Winter Palace's bulletin board that the first notice of his
discovery appeared.
In 1994, the Winter Palace completed an $11 million renovation of
the original 102-room building "to return the atmosphere and
reputation of the hotel," says manager Denis de Schrevel. Not
every old touch was kept, however. The old ballroom, with its spring-supported
floor, was transformed into a spacious lounge. After a hard day's
sightseeing among the ruins and tombs, explains de Schrevel, "there
just isn't much demand for dancing." Rooms, however, remain in
demand: A 125-room addition to the modern wing opened early this year.
Investing in tradition has proved good business for the Winter Palace,
as it has for other classic Middle Eastern hotels. A key reason for
success, says de Schrevel, is that "I'm running a hotel with
a history." That description—and that success—is
equally true of the hotel's mellowed and comfortable counterparts
elsewhere across the Middle East.
Arthur
Clark is a Saudi Aramco staff writer based in Dhahran. His fondness
for hotels and foreign lands dates back to childhood trips to Chicago,
where his family stayed in stately old hotels that served guests from
around the world.
This
article appeared on pages 24-33 of the July/August 1997 print edition
of Saudi Aramco World.
Hotels
With a History
Written
and photographed by Arthur Clark
