The Westin Paris – Vendôme

The Westin Paris – Vendôme, at 3 rue de Castiglione on the corner of the rue de Rivoli, facing the Tuileries Garden opened in April 1878 as the Hôtel Continental, It was designed by Charles Garnier's son-in-law Henri Blondel and was intended to be the most luxurious hotel in Paris at the time. It occupied a full block, the former premises of the Ministry of Finance, (burned in 1871) which had been designed by François-Hippolyte Destailleur in 1817, following the Bourbon Restoration. During the first World War the hotel was used as a military hospital by the French. The Hôtel Continental remained the largest hotel in Paris for decades; the Russian Grand Dukes habitually stayed there; at the Liberation of Paris, bedsheets were hung from its windows as cheerful flags of surrender. The hotel was renamed the Inter-Continental Paris in 1969, and then became The Westin Paris in 2005, adding the suffix Vendôme to its name in 2010.