One advantage of writing a retrospective Blog is that you can do more research and as a result I discovered that the Sofitel Legend Hotel in which I was staying was indeed a ‘legend’. It is a 5 star historic luxury hotel opened in 1901 in the French colonial style, located at 15 Ngo Quyen Street and only 100 metres from the Opera House Square. According to the Wikipedia entry the hotel has a rich history and a century long tradition of welcoming ambassadors, writers, heads of state and entertainers including Charlie Chaplin, Jane Fonda, George H. W. Bush, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac amongst others.
The hotel was opened in August 1901 and was the first venue in Indochina to show motion pictures.
Somerset Maugham wrote The Gentleman in the Parlour at the hotel. Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard spent their honeymoon at the hotel in 1936 after marrying in Shanghai. Graham Greene stayed at the hotel in 1951 while writing The Quiet American. Jane Fonda stayed here during her famous trip to Hanoi in June 1972.
In 1987, the French Pullman Hotels chain entered into a joint venture with the Vietnamese government to restore the hotel to international standards. The hotel was completely rebuilt, regaining the name Metropole and reopening on March 8, 1992 as the Pullman Metropole Hotel. The hotel later moved from the Pullman to the Sofitel chain, and was placed in their exclusive Legend Division. The new 135-room Opera Wing was added in 1996.
No photo but here is a link:
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