These are the places that can nearly outshine Elizabeth Taylor’s love of Burmese sapphires and pear-shaped diamonds. Pay homage to the screen siren’s favourite glamorous hotspots and revel in these stratospherically luxurious addresses in some of the most glamorous cities in the world. If you are going to be proposed to at a hotel, then this is surely the place to do it.
Which is what happened to Elizabeth Taylor, in suite 471 when Richard Burton popped the question with an emerald Bulgari brooch. It’s all the way, wherever you turn at Italy’s most glamorous monastery-hotel, which has pedigree and panache in spades – and that’s nowhere better exemplified than at La Terrazza, where there is even a pasta pomodoro named in Taylor’s honour. Its longstanding star-chef Corrado Corti uses three types of tomato: San Marzano, Sorrento and Pachino.
Afterwards, slink off to the Jardin des Rêves Dior spa: a pop-up, green toile de Jouy temple of joy, passing through gardens with a statement saltwater pool, to a shaded gazebo where the therapist Juliana will prise your shoulders from your ears and slather you in Dior products. Come bellini-hour on the terrace, there are always several European tycoons eyeing up the top table, while soulful crooner Vladi tinkers away on his piano. But you may prefer to hop on the hotel’s Dior Vespa and navigate hairpin roads down to the port for negronis at Dav Mare (the illustrious restaurant of sister hotel Splendido Mare).
The Dorchester was the hotel Liz Taylor’s parents loved, and where she first stayed with them aged 17. Here, the love runs deep. You can’t help but relish the supreme glamour of the hotel’s Elysian days: Elizabeth Taylor lurking in her ravishing Harlequin suite , wanting only bouquets of gardenias and lily of the valley in her room, or taking a bath in the suite’s now fabled pink marble bathroom, where Taylor, it is said, received the life-changing call confirming her lead role in while soaking.
Cecil Beaton shot her portrait here. Landmark birthdays, including Taylor’s 31st, and Richard Burton’s 50th were celebrated at The Dorch. It’s an icon that just gets better and better.
Recent designer Pierre-Yves Rochon has injected even more grace and poise and marbled glamour, staying completely true to the hotel’s old-world DNA: the original antiques are all still there but there is now a terrific sense of light and space in the lobby (Rochon cleverly took the Mezzanine away) and upped the chandelier size. And drama: the flowers by Phillip Hammond are sensational (and there is also a new flower and cake shop next door, which is a pastel-hued fantasy). Then there is the new Vesper Bar, an ode to the hotel’s 30s heyday, where Cecil Beaton illustrations hang on the walls, icy vodka martinis are shaken and lobster tempura is a must.
You can still feel Taylor sweeping through its space. There are few places in the world with a strong sense of continuity, of a past preserved that makes the present more special; but the ‘Pink Palace’ is a notable one. Nowhere is more bathed in LA grandeur than this hotel where an old-school Hollywood vibe prevails and the legendary staff and attention to detail remains – not to mention the lure of its fabulous bungalows.
Five, to be specific, including the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ favourite . This is where Taylor took six out of her eight honeymoons; where better to sip martinis in a pink satin dressing-gown than lounging by its pool? Where else to savour a Sunset club sandwich but in the Cabana Café (with avocado, turkey and sun-dried tomato aioli, a signature snack since 1940)? You’ll want dinner in the bougainvillaea-draped garden of the Polo Lounge – home of the divine McCarthy salad and tortilla soup – where Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her Oscar win for . It was here that Elizabeth Taylor came for her honeymoon with Conrad Hilton.
It was also here that Taylor began her love affair with Richard Burton (on the same trip). And where could be more bathed in Riviera gold than this bastion of old world glamour? Here there are infinite backdrops for Liz to exude her bombshell magic, swathed in diamonds, sitting in one of the hotel’s enchanting cabanas, eating one of the world’s best club sandwiches at the water’s edge. These star 1930s bathing huts, once alleged love nests for Marlene Dietrich and Joe Kennedy Sr as well, are the apogee of simple sophistication, their unique scent supplied by cypress trees, lavender – and money.
They embody the stylish sybaritism that we associate with F. Scott Fitzgerald - and let us not forget that Taylor and Burton were the 60s equivalent of Zelda and Scott. For this is the old South of France, the Riviera as it should be: yachts mooring by the Eden-Roc restaurant, party people partying, living it up by the famous saltwater pool that was blasted out of basalt rock in 1914.
Today, Liz would no doubt approve of barman Christophe’s Rose du Cap cocktails – a heavenly mix of rosé champagne, lychee and rose water – at the rooftop bar. Not to mention the cosseting you’ll receive at the Michelin-star beauty of a restaurant, Louroc, while you savour caviar on cauliflower cream and sea bass cooked in a salt and fennel-seed crust – washed down with plenty of the Bamfords’ Château Léoube rosé. The great Dirk Bogarde wrote of the magical view from the top step of the hotel’s terrace: ‘If that doesn’t leave you breathless, you don’t deserve to breathe anyway.
’ All is well with the world when you’re at the Cipriani, a pale-pink private fantasy, where Elizabeth Taylor would frequently hole up with her pet dog, Sugar. It’s the ultimate comfort zone, blasting fabulousness from the moment you step onto the elegant, private, wooden motor launch that whisks you away from Saint Mark’s to its site on the Giudecca – where, on the pontoon, concierge Roberto is of course on hand to welcome you. (And what a welcome: he knows exactly who you are.
) The buildings are still painted a pale peach – well, Bellinis are in the blood – and are surrounded by romantic, Alice-in-Wonderland gardens, complete with vineyards, and some of the most impressive loggias imaginable. Here the long-standing legendary barman Walter Bolzonella can make a martini like no other – and just you wait until you speak to him about his memories of Taylor – that is worth a trip alone. There was the time that Taylor lost her diamond ring in the bathroom, which Zonella found; and the time he served Taylor’s dog, Sugar, a glass of water in a murano martini glass.
To die for. Like Venice itself, the Cip never disappoints – which is why it’s one of the most successful hotels on the planet. And if you’re a night-owl like Taylor, it would be rude to emerge before breakfast if you’re a guest in the Palladio suite, where white-jacketed waiters will serve bacon and eggs with mimosas (in classic Liz-style) on your private terrace.
The swimming pool is a heavenly sun-trap – it’s hard to tear yourself away – and not just at film-festival time..
