Most have grudgingly added air conditioning, but that is about the only serious concession to modernity made by the great old resort hotels of the Continent. Tourists who need cellophane-wrapped water glasses may take their business elsewhere.
Stays are shorter and guest lists less gilded nowadays, but there are still enough old-rich, old-faithful families who return year after year to keep Europe's deluxe palaces filled nearly to capacity. For $30 and up for a double room, they get majestic grounds and baronial interiors that evoke the glories of la belle epoque, as well as pluperfect service from staffers who frequently outnumber guests, have seemingly been around forever, and never forget a visitor's face or the name that goes with it. Among the continental standouts:
¶Negresco, in Nice, is one of the French Riviera's "Grands Cinq" (the other four: Monte Carlo's Hotel de Paris, Cannes's Carlton, Beaulieu-sur-Mer's La Réserve, Cap d'Antibes' Hôtel du Cap). It is also the most colorful, with its pink-and-green cupola, its doorman in blue knee socks, red pants, buckled shoes and jaunty red cockade, its one-ton Baccarat crystal chandelier in the lounge—and a main floor men's room copied from Napoleon's campaign tent, with toilet paper in saddle bags and spigots of 18-karat gold. No two guest rooms are alike, and once a guest settles on a favorite, he is likely to insist on the same room year after year. Three suites are patterned after the chambers of Louis XIV, XV and XVI. But Sophia Loren favors No. 414, the so-called Royal Suite, copied from Josephine's boudoir at Malmaison.