The Glory of A City

When Weiss Anderson, the director of the film ”The Grand Budapest Hotel,” asked Manfred Grassauer if he would like to play a role in the film. This chief concierge at the Imperial Hotel Vienna for 50 years said earnestly, ”I‘m sorry Sir, but the hotel is under renovation and I can‘t leave.”

Even so, the director, as a regular guest of The Imperial Hotel Vienna, let old Manfred take a long tour for him from the front to the back of house.

Splendid History

The 145 yearold Imperial Hotel begins life as a palace for the Prince of Württemberg. But the Prince and his wife decide to move to a smaller palace in the suburbs after the municipality decrees that a new street would pass through the grounds of their home. The Württembergs are having none of that. The Hotel Imperial opened on 28 April 1873, just in time for the Universal Exposition. There should be an imperial flair to the hotel, hence Imperial is to be its name. The press considered it ‘pleasant, elegant, simple with grand style‘, and ‘150 rooms, imperial, indeed‘. In 1879 His Majesty Franz Joseph made his first visit to the Imperial where he met with Prince Otto von Bismarck who was residing at the Imperial. Bismarck had enjoyed his stay at the hotel tremendously and noted in his diary: ‘Whenever I showed myself at the windows of my apartment, the friendly Viennese population greeted me with cheers. This acclamation had become even stronger after His Majesty had personally visited me here at the hotel.‘

During the roaring twenties the Imperial Café is the focal point of European intelligentsia, the cerebral centre of Vienna. After the war was over, The Imperial becomes the Russian headquarters in 1945. General Manager Stefan Plank, imprisoned for his anti German sentiments during the war, returned to manage the hotel from May 1945. We wonder today whether the Russians considered him the right man to do so as almost 150 Persian rugs disappeared one by one from the hotel during his first few months in charge. ‘They are in the laundry,‘ the Imperial staff told the Russians. ‘But they‘ll never come back‘ the Russians complained. They came back. After the Russians had left Vienna in 1955, all 150 rugs were returned to the hotel, but not cleaned They had spent almost a decade in the vaults of a Viennese bank.

The Imperial had experienced five major renovations to improve the facilities and enlarge the scale from 1955 to now and became The Luxury Collection hotel in 1995. Portraits of the once mighty Austriahungarian Emperor Francis Joseph I and his beautiful Queen Princess Sissi still hang in the lobby, proclaiming the country‘s centuriesold glory and that it is still the best hotel in Austria.

Time Enduring

Old Manfred led me up the magnificent green marble staircase from the right side of the lobby, just like stepping into the glorious and distant past of the Imperial Hotel. On a table in the living room of the royal suite, there is a beautiful and thick commemorative album, on which the messages of celebrities and dignitaries who have lived here are signed. There are dozens of presidents and heads of state of vario us countries,Queen Elizabeth II, Emperor of Japan, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, the Obamas, President Bush and of course the numerous stars such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Leonardo Dicaprio, Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow...

The guestrooms on the second and third floors of the hotel are decorated with classical imperial aesthetics under the high roof of the large Windows, showcasing the noble and elegant European classic beauty. However, old Manfred told me that guests from Asia preferred the hotel‘s top two floors. And sure enough, milky white gives a priority tone of fresh and bright. Less classical thick, but still elegant and showy. Furniture is more simple, crystal lamp decorate the roof and wall of toilet, all full of neoclassical lowkey luxury. Do let our Asian guests feel easy to enjoy.

A Service of The Leading Rank

The Imperial in Vienna is one of the few hotels in the world and the only hotel in Vienna offering a personal butler service. After training at the Imperial‘s sister hotel, The St. Regis in New York, and in butler schools in London the elegant butlers are on call. For guests in suites, the personal valet is always at the disposition of the traveler at no extra charge. Inroom checkin, personalized business cards, pressing service, shoeshine, a personal wakeup call, and early morning tea or coffee at your bedside is only part of the service. Even the morning paper is handironed A guest history, dating back some 50 years, guarantees that every guest is treated like a personal friend fulfilling wishes even before they are expressed. General Manager Mario Habicher explains, ”You will find many beautiful hotels in top locations. In the long run, however, only a unique and individual service will make the difference”.

Breakfast in Imperial Cafe is extremely busy, as more than half of the area is used by the local guests. Local people are used to having breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner in the Cafe, enjoying friends and family time. Just like the Imperial Hotel, which has accompanied this city for 145 years, has long been incarnated as a kind of spiritual power, traveling through history and reality, and shuttling in people‘s minds.