Page 107 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

historical connection convincing and marketable, at least in the to luxury hotels after their previous use became untenable. The
eyes of the sceptical tourist; and the loss of authenticity entailed Hôtel du Palais at Biarritz is a case in point. The original palace
in the necessary updating of the room’s amenities presents a very was built in the mid-1850s as a seaside retreat for Napoleon III
common dilemma in the appeal to heritage when providing high- and the Empress Eugénie, whose guests included members of the
class accommodation and services. Spanish and Belgian royal families and of the Russian nobility, as
To make effective capital out of great events that can be well as Bismarck, who used his visits to Biarritz in the 1860s for
represented as being directly entwined with its own history, a hotel diplomatic negotiations with the Emperor as well as to conduct
needs to be more than a staging post for passing trade. It needs to an affair with the young wife of a Russian diplomat. After the fall
be, in some sense, a destination in its own right, and in a situation of the Second Empire the palace was sold off and became a hotel,
whose ‘place-myth’ has the power to attract, keep and sustain the attracting the sort of royal clientele from Europe and beyond that
kinds of international gatherings, more or less formal in their made Biarritz a resort with global reach in the late nineteenth
organisation, which become for these purposes the negotiable and early twentieth centuries; and it was, for example, one of the
‘stuff of history’. It needs to be located in, or to constitute of itself, a locations for the Spanish King Alfonso xiii’s whirlwind courtship in
fashionable haunt of ‘high society’, with the capacity for institutional 1906 of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Princess Victoria Eugenia
discretion that usually helps to sustain such a reputation. A hotel of Battenberg, with lasting consequences for the dynastic histories
may lay claim to being the location of a historic event on the of Spain and Europe. This took place in the aftermath of a serious
national or international stage: the signing of a peace treaty, the fire three years earlier, which had destroyed much of the original
site of a diplomatic encounter which precipitated war or formed palace; but it does not seem to have compromised the hotel’s aura
the basis for a significant change in the pattern of international of authenticity, as was expressed by the nostalgic Second Empire
alliances, the place where a national political alliance was cemented Ball of 1922, at which the star participants included the Shah of
or a key change of policy or alignment was agreed, or the site Persia, and King Alfonso himself.
21
of a historic struggle between key personalities or factions. This As this example illustrates, the history of the occupation and
aspect of the historical relationship between tourism, politics and use of such establishments is often convoluted. Meetings between
diplomacy has seldom been highlighted either by historians of leaders of the great powers to negotiate the post-Second World
tourism or by those dealing with international relations, but the War settlements in 1945 illustrate this point. At Yalta, in the Crimea,
hotel as suitable neutral territory for diplomatic encounters and the discussions between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in the
negotiations has had a significant part to play, not just as a passive February took place in the White Livadia Palace, which had been
backcloth to events, but also, it can be argued, as an organisation built as the summer home of Tsar Nicholas II, housed members
whose layout, conventions and timetables may have shaped events of the Danish and British royal families for Alexander III’s silver
in ways that might influence eventual outcomes. wedding celebrations in 1891, was reconstructed in 1904 at Yalta’s
Associations with great events on the international stage are apogee as a fashionable resort on the ‘Russkaya Riviera’, and became
most likely to be identified with hotels whose claims to historical a workers’ sanatorium after the revolution of 1917. After Yalta, the
importance are already strongly established through a reputation palace became the summer seat of the president of the ussr until
for playing host to royalty, aristocrats or senior politicians of 1989, before its subsequent transformation into spa, holiday centre
national or international standing. Such locations are likely to have and museum, trading heavily on the lasting historical significance
been royal or ducal palaces in the first instance, being converted of the 1945 conference.
22
Fig. 3 Carved straight from white marble with no preliminary model – a technique known as
Edouard-Marcel Sandoz’s statue of Peace, sculpted in 1914 at the artist’s new studio direct carving – the sculpture was installed in the hotel foyer on 4 February 1915,
in the Villa d’Alésia in Paris. It was designed to commemorate the peace treaty several months after the outbreak of the First World War. A sculptor from Solothurn
between Turkey and Italy signed in 1912 at the Beau-Rivage Palace, Lausanne. named Bilderstein and João da Silva helped Sandoz to add the final touches.

106