The Hotel Britannique is born, right in the heart of the 1st area of Paris. The Hotel is situated some 100 meters from the oldest square of  the right bank, 20 Avenue Victoria.

During the middle of the 19th Century, under the reign of Napoléon the III, the Baron Haussmann was hired to modernize Paris streets. Haussmann began his campaign ‘Paris embellished, Paris enlarged, Paris sanitised’ by clearing away any confusing city path, making way for domineering and uniformed straight roads. X marked the spot at Les Halles, just 400 meters from the hotel which he believed to be the ‘belly of Paris’ and endeavored to design the rest of his new city around it.

In 1854, the Avenue Victoria had seen its early days under the title of ‘Boulevard de l’Hôtel de Ville’. This would be replaced one year later by ‘Avenue Victoria’, in honor of the British Queen’s visit to the town Hall of Paris on the 23rd August, 1855. Queen Victoria had been the distinguished guest of Napoléon III at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. This moment marked the beginning of the cordial agreement between the two Empires.

It is at Number 20 of this avenue of scarcely finished buildings that the Perret-Baxter family chose to establish the Hotel Britannique.

« Presented to Monsieur et Madame Perret, Hotel Britannique Paris, by a few Scarborough friends, for their kind attention during a visit to Paris ».

1870

The fall of the Second Empire – Napoléon III is denounced and the Prussians occupied Paris

1871

The Paris Commune, an attempt of proletarian revolution. Massacre of the Communards by the Versaillais. Paris burning in may.

Rivoli Street situated some 100 meters from the Hotel Britannique

1879

The construction of the first telephone network begins

1886

The celebration of the centennial of the Declaration of Independence in the United States of America.

« Liberty enlightening the world », better known as the Statue of Liberty, was offered to the States by France in 1886, as a sign of friendship to celebrate the declaration of American independence. The inauguration of the statue was celebrated on October 28th 1886 in the presence of the president of the United States, Grover Cleveland.  The idea came from the French legal expert and professor, Edward of Laboulaye in 1865, under Napoléon III:  « I will fight for liberty, I will call for the free people. I will try to glorify the republic over this country, and I will continue until that day arrives in my country ». The gift of the Statue of Liberty to a Republic, located on the other side of the Atlantic, played an important role in the fight for the maintenance of the IIIrd Republic.

The Statue of Liberty would go on to become a national symbol for the United States, representing the liberty and emancipation of man with regards to oppression.

1887

The building of the Eiffel Tower commences

1889

The celebration of the centennial of the 1789 French Revolution. Inauguration of the Eiffel Tower.

The french citizens living in USA reciprocates the offer of friendship by donating a representation of the Statue of Liberty. The statue was also given to the French at this moment in history in order to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution. One can read on the plaque « 5th JULY 1776 - 14th JULY 1789″.  It was inaugurated by the President Carnot on July the 4th 1892, 6 years after the donation of the « New York » Statue of Liberty. In 1937, during the Universal Exhibition, Bartholdi’s wish was finally granted and the positioning of the French statue was changed in order to face towards New York.

1894

The Sorbonne holds the « Congress for the restoration of the Olympic Games »

1898

A census is taken counting some 94 255 bicycles and 89 automobiles in Paris

1900

The Universal Exhibition and the Olympic Games at Paris. The first metro line appears (Vincennes – Porte Maillot). This is also the beginning of the period of progress named ‘La Belle Epoque’

1910

The great flood of Paris. Somewhat slightly elevated, the area surrounding the Hotel Britannique is left surprisingly untouched despite its close proximity to the Seine

1914

The beginning of the First World War and the end of the ‘Belle Epoque’. The Hotel Britannique opens its doors to the American-English Quakers, providing mutual aid for those in need

A part of the Hotel Britannique, dedicated to the Quakers

1920

The Christian Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, establishes its first official french headquarters in Paris at the Hotel Brtitannique. The lasting documentation of this period tells us that the Perret-Baxters had great sympathy for the friend’s plight which was reciprocated with a commemorative plaque, still standing in the hotel lobby today.

« This Hotel, during the great war of 1914 – 1918, housed the Quaker mission of the Friends Society and gave aid to the population and reconstructed regions touched by the war. During the years 1914 – 1920 more than a million volunteers, English and American and both women and men, took part in this cause and passed through the hotel. The red and black star, the sign of the mission, was first seen in 1870-1871 by the members of a similar mission sent to France by the Quakers in order to help the victims of this war ».

The movement founded by the descendants of the Anglican Church during the 17th Century is documented in Voltaire’s ‘Philosophical Letters’, published in 1734 :

‘I believed that the doctrine and the history of such extra-ordinary people were worthy of curiosity. To find out about them, I visited one the most eminent Quakers in England (Andrew Pitt, a linen draper from Hampstead) who had been in commerce for thirty years, but had decided to limit his wealth and wants, and had retired to the countryside close to London. I went to seek him out in his retreat which was a small house, well-built and clean and without ornaments.
The Quaker was a fresh-faced old man who had never been ill, because he had never known passions or intemperance. I have never seen in my life a nobler or more engaging countenance than his. He was dressed, like all those of his religion, in a plain coat without pleats in the sides or buttons on either the pockets or the sleeves. He was wearing a large hat, with turned down brim, like our clergy. He received me with his hat on his head, and came towards me without the slightest inclination of his body, but there was more politeness in the open, humane expression on his face than in the custom of drawing one leg behind the other, and carrying the head-covering in one’s hand.’

“Our apparel is also somewhat different from that of others that it may be a perpetual warning to us not to imitate them. Others wear the badges and marks of their several dignities, and we those of Christian humility. We fly from all assemblies of pleasure, from diversions of every kind, and from places where gaming is practised; and, indeed, our case would be very deplorable, should we fill with such levities as those I have mentioned the heart which ought to be the habitation of God ».

« We never swear an oath, not even in a court of law. We think that the name of God ought not to be prostituted in the miserable squabbles of men. When we are obliged to appear before a magistrate on someone else’s account (for law suits are unknown amongst Friends) we affirm the truth by a « yes » or a « no ». The judges believe us on our simple word, whilst so many other Christians perjure themselves upon the Gospels »……

« And when, after a victory is gained, the whole city of London is illuminated; when the sky is in a blaze with fireworks, and a noise is heard in the air, of thanksgivings, of bells, of organs, and of the cannon, we groan in silence, and are deeply affected with sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart, for the sad havoc which is the occasion of those public rejoicings. »

Opposing the war, the Religious Society of Friends offered their generous services to the hospitals during the World War I, believing that God is charitable and man must be also.

1918

The end of the war. After the end of the conflict, a generation dreaming of a new world proclaims ‘never again’

1920

The beginning of the ‘Années Folles’. The utopian ideals of the 19th Century gave way to individualism and extravagance. It’s during this period that Paris saw the emergence of  art movements such as Surrealism, Dada and Art Deco. It is also at this time that the American writer Henry Miller would call the crossroads of Vavin-Raspail-Montparnasse « the navel of the world »

1924

The Olympic Games

1927

Charles Lindbergh receives a hero’s welcome after traversing the North Atlantic

1928

The Inauguration of the tennis stadium Rolland-Garros

1931

The first television show

1937

Universal Exhibition

1940

3rd of June, the Nazis bombard Paris: 250 deaths

1943

3rd of September, Allied bombardment: 400 deaths

1944

21st of April, Allied bombardment: 600 deaths. 19th of August, the liberation of Paris

Luckily Hotel Britannique’s treasure escapes the Nazi’s robbery!

During the four years of Nazi occupation, the owner of the Hotel Britannique – a descendent of the family Perret-Baxter, founders of the Hotel, had taken care to bury his valuable treasure in the ground of the hotel’s vaulted cellars. And what a treasure ! Dozens of bottles of vintage Sauternes wines aged from the beginning of the century and bottles of Bourgogne, dating from the 20s. To celebrate the liberation of Paris (and the bottle’s liberation from the ground) certain were opened and, undoubtedly, greatly appreciated. However a great number were preserved even into the 80s. The current owner of the hotel remembers to have had the great honour to taste, in 1983, a bottle of Vosnes-Romanée aged 60 years. That is an experience that one never forgets.

1947

The first fashion show (Christian Dior)

1968

The revolution of spirits tumbles Paris.

1977

8th December, the opening of the metro/train station RER Chatelet-Les Halles, the most important metro stop in the world. It is also the closest station to the Hotel.

1978

The Hotel Britannique changes hands from the Perret-Baxter family. The British born Miss Louise Claude Baxter, born the 17th May 1926, passes the Hotel over to the family Danjou. Of French nationality the Danjous originate not from Great Britain, but Brittany.

1980

The hotel closes for six months for important renovation works. A lift is installed, the bathrooms are added, each floor is rearranged and the decoration is renewed.

1985

The Hotel Britannique receives its 3rd star

2000

The hotel enters the very selective club of quality hotels selected by the Hotels with Charm Guide

2010

The Hotel Britannique is placed the 37th greatest hotel out of the 1841 hotels in Paris by Tripadvisor. A great 150th birthday present, Champagne!

Romantic Paris Hotel

Hotel Britannique Paris Romantic Paris Hotel, 3 star Hotel Paris

Some consider that the name of the Parisii tribe comes from the Celtic Gallic word parisio meaning « the working people » or « the stone breakers”. The  King Saint Louis encouraged the legend of an ancestry of prince Pâris which kidnapped the beautiful Hélene and provoked the Trojan War.

Paris has many nicknames, but its most famous is « La Ville-Lumière » (« The City of Light ») a name it owes first to its fame as a centre of education and ideas during the Age of Enlightenment, and later to its early adoption of street lighting.

Paris’ inhabitants are known in English as « Parisians » and in French as Parisiens. Parisians are often pejoratively called Parigots, a term first used in 1900 by those living outside the Paris region, but now the term may be considered endearing by Parisians themselves.

HISTORY

The earliest archaeological signs of permanent habitation in the Paris area date from around 4200 BC. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the area near the river Seine from around 250 BC. The Romans conquered the Paris basin in 52 BC, with a permanent settlement by the end of the same century on the Left Bank Sainte Geneviève Hill and the Île de la Cité. The Gallo-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, but later Gallicised to Lutèce.

It expanded greatly over the following centuries, becoming a prosperous city with a forum, palaces, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre. The collapse of the Roman empire and the fifth-century Germanic invasions sent the city into a period of decline. By 400 AD, Lutèce, by then largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little more than a garnison town entrenched into the hastily fortified central island. The city reclaimed its original appellation of « Paris » towards the end of the Roman occupation. The Frankish king Clovis I established Paris as his capital in 508.

Paris’s population was around 200,000 when the Black Death arrived in 1348, killing as many as 800 people a day, and 40,000 died from the plague in 1466. According to Biraben, plague was present in Paris for almost one year in three in the 16th and 17th centuries to 1670. Paris lost its position as seat of the French realm during occupation of the English-allied Burgundians during the Hundred Years’ War, but regained its title when Charles VII of France reclaimed the city from English rule in 1436. Paris from then became France’s capital once again in title, but France’s real centre of power would remain in the Loire Valley until King Francis I returned France’s crown residences to Paris in 1528.

During the French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic party. In August 1572, under the reign of Charles IX, while many noble Protestants were in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV, to Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre occurred; begun on 24 August, it lasted several days and spread throughout the country. During the Fronde, Parisians rose in rebellion and the royal family fled the city (1648). King Louis XIV then moved the royal court permanently to Versailles in 1682.

A century later, Paris was the centre stage for the French Revolution, with the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and the overthrow of the monarchy in September 1792.

Paris was occupied by Russian Cossack and Kalmyk cavalry units upon Napoleon’s defeat on the 31st of March 1814; this was the first time in 400 years that the city had been conquered by a foreign power. The ensuing Restoration period, or the return of the monarchy under Louis XVIII (1814–1824) and Charles X, ended with the July Revolution Parisian uprising of 1830.

The new ‘constitutional monarchy’ under Louis-Philippe ended with the 1848 « February Revolution » that led to the creation of the Second Republic.

Throughout these events, cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1849 ravaged the population of Paris; the 1832 epidemic alone claimed 20,000 of the population of 650,000.

The greatest development in Paris’s history began with the Industrial Revolution creation of a network of railways that brought an unprecedented flow of migrants to the capital from the 1840s. The city’s largest transformation came with the 1852 Second Empire under Napoleon III; his préfet Haussmann levelled entire districts of Paris’ narrow, winding medieval streets to create the network of wide avenues and neo-classical façades that still make much of modern Paris; the reason for this transformation was twofold, as not only did the creation of wide boulevards beautify and sanitize the capital, it also facilitated the effectiveness of troops and artillery against any further uprisings and barricades that Paris was so famous for. The Hotel Britannique was built in 1860.

The Second Empire ended in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), and a besieged Paris under heavy bombardment surrendered on 28 January 1871. The discontent of Paris’ populace with the new armistice-signing government seated in Versailles resulted in the creation of a Parisian « Commune » government, supported by an army in large part created from members of the City’s former National Guard, that would both continue resistance against the Prussians and oppose the government « Versaillais » army. The result was a bloody week Semaine Sanglante that resulted in the death, many by summary execution, of roughly 20,000 « communards » before the fighting ended on May 28, 1871. The ease at which the Versaillais army overtook Paris owed much to Baron Haussmann’s earlier renovations.

France’s late 19th-century Universal Expositions made Paris an increasingly important centre of technology, trade and tourism. Its most famous were the 1889 Universal Exposition to which Paris owes its « temporary » display of architectural engineering prowess, the Eiffel Tower, a structure that remained the world’s tallest building until 1930; the 1900 Universal Exposition saw the opening of the first Paris Métro line.

« Fluctuat nec mergitur », meaning « He was beaten by the waves but does not sink ». It is about the « Scilicet », ship also represented on the crest of the city and symbol of powerful corporation of the Boatmen

Source : Wikipedia

Some museums to visit

• Musée Carnavalet
• Crypte archeolique du parvis Notre-Dame
• Musée Cognacq-Jay

Romantic Paris Hotel

Hotel Britannique Paris Romantic Paris Hotel, 3 star Hotel Paris

We invite you to discover the Palais Garnier which is an architectural masterpiece of the Second Empire. Today, we will tell you how the project of a new opera theatre was born.

From the Royal Academy of Dance to the Opera Garnier

The Royal Academy of Dance was founded in 1661 under the reign of Louis XIV. The choreographic art was previously reserved for the entertainment of the Court, the Royal Academy finally allowed the dance company to have a stage to perform in public. By dancing during the interludes of Operas, the Ballet gradually gained its independence.

Then in 1669, the Royal Academy of Music was also created.

It was formed by a troupe of singers, the first professional orchestra of France and the Royal Academy of Dance. The King granted it the privilege of the monopoly of “musical theatre” performance.

Also called Opera or Opera Academy, it would promote French opera in Paris and the most important cities.

Project of a new opera theatre on the Grands Boulevards

During two centuries, the Opera changed its location many times, until the construction of a new building was decided by Napoleon III, having been the victim of an assassination attempt outside the theatre Le Peletier, which then served as an opera in Paris.

The will was to build a theatre in a safer neighborhood. Already by the prefect Haussmann remodeled as part of major renovations of the capital, the Grands Boulevards district was entirely appropriate.

A wide open and international competition was organized to build an « Imperial Academy of Music and Dance« . 171 projects were received. The event was important, the officials, the press, the Parisians, all were eager to know the result.

A jury composed of Prince Walewski and a group of experts studied all these projects… On May 30, 1861, to the surprise of the major installed architects and the despair of Viollet-le-Duc, Charles Garnier, a thirty-five years old architect, unknown, was declared winner by consensus.

At once rational in its fitting, pure in its proportions and eclectic in its decor, the project has surprise and was attracting. It combined several styles harmoniously arranged. At the Empress Eugenie, who exclaimed: « …it is not a style, it is neither Greek nor Roman…”, Charles Garnier said “it’s Napoleon III, Madam!”.

Garnier surrounded himself with architect friends to assist him throughout the project. Long and difficult, the construction of the new opera lasted for fifteen years.

In 1867, the facade was presented during the Universal Exhibition. But the interior was not finished. The war in 1870, the fall of the Empire, the Commune and the lack of money led to the work stoppage. The construction restarted after the fire at the opera in the rue Le Peletier.

The Opera Garnier was finally inaugurated in January 1875 by the President MacMahon, in presence of many French and European Officials. Regarding Charles Garnier… although invited, he had to pay his place in a second box…

If you want to know more about the Palais Garnier, come back next week on this blog!

We will present you this monumental building which is one of the greatest operas in the world. You will discover its beautiful auditorium, its Grand Staircase and Foyers, its luxurious décor… Historic monument since 1923, the Palais Garnier is also one of the most visited monuments of Paris.

Hotel Britannique Paris, Romantic Paris Hotel, 3 star Hotel Paris