Three Royal-Grade Hotels for an Unforgettable Stay
1. Airelles Château de Versailles – Le Grand Contrôle, France
The garden Airelles Château de Versailles – Le Grand Contrôle, France (Airelles Château de Versailles – Le Grand Contrôle)
Retrace the footsteps of King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette at Airelles Château de Versailles – Le Grand Contrôle, a new hotel on the outskirts of Paris.
Originally a hunting lodge built for Louis XIII in 1623, it was extended into a palace for his son Louis XIV and later used by Louis XV and Louis XVI, the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.
Built from stone the colour of a crusty baguette, the building is decorated with velvet armchairs, paintings commissioned for the royals and chandeliers – even the 15m pool has a chandelier above it.
Necker suite, Airelles Château de Versailles – Le Grand Contrôle (Renée Kemps)
Guests can use the hotel’s spa or dine in an Alain Ducasse restaurant, but to really feel like royalty book one of the royal experiences. These include an after-hours guided tour of the state apartments, opera house, chapel and a hall lined with 357 mirrors, an early morning tour of the 2,000-acre estate, which is home to an orangery, pond and an English garden designed for Marie-Antoinette, and a backstage tour and private show in the opera house. You can also have dinner for two accompanied by a string quartet in the former apartment of Louis XV’s daughters’ former apartment, see costumes from the TV series Versailles and be fitted with a costume in your suite.
2. Selman Marrakech, Morocco
A horse in the grounds of Selman Marrakech (Alvar Thomas)
Located to the south west of Marrakech’s old town in Morocco, Selman Marrakech was built for the Bennani Smires family, who still own it. Like many of the riads in the medina, it features silk lampshades, Moroccan lanterns and mosaic tiles, but a colonnaded portico entrance gives it a palatial feel.
The hotel has 50 rooms, five suites and five villas devised by the French architect, interior designer and garden designer Jacques Garcia, with a spa and French windows opening on to an 80m pool fringed with palm trees and manicured gardens, the Atlas mountains on the horizon.
Unusually, it’s also home to a stud farm, made up of five paddocks and stables for the family’s private collection of Arabian thoroughbreds – and even the stables look like the hallways of a palace, with skylights, blood-orange walls and lanterns hung from arches. Guests can watch trainers at work and see equestrian shows and dressage in the grounds.
3. Manowce Palace, Poland
Manowce Palace, Poland (Manowce Palace)
Set among woods in the north west of Poland, Manowce Palace near the city of Szczecin is closer to Germany’s Berlin than the Polish capital of Warsaw.
The building is thought to have been in the early 20th century by Theodor Bless, but despite its name, it’s not strictly a palace, as its first owner was Georg Wegner, a chief medical officer and director of a hospital in Szczecin. It has since been used as a base for political parties, the Soviet Army during the Second World War and as a summer camp.
Following a restoration however, it is often hired as a film set or for photoshoots. It’s also a hotel with 13 bedrooms, three apartments and five reception rooms, each decorated with the antiques and paintings you’d expect from a real palace. While you can book individual rooms, it can also be hired exclusively.
The neoclassical exterior features a creamy white balcony and steps down to a lawn that drops into the Szczecin Lagoon, which is fed by the Baltic Sea.
