The Cultured Traveller - Fourth Anniversary Edition, September-November 2018 Issue 23

Needless to say, given the hotel’s long history, the list of royalty, presidents, dignitaries and celebrities who have stayed at Grande Bretagne is endless: Maria Callas, Aristotle Onassis, Jayne Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolf Nureyev, Sophia Loren and Laurence Olivier to name but a few. Not to mention world famous fashion designers and pop stars including Giorgio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, David Bowie and Sting. During WWII, a busboy saved Winston Churchill’s life by disarming a bomb in the basement. In 1972, Archbishop Makarios addressed the Greek people from a second-floor balcony after his near assassination and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. But whilst modern Greek history quite literally shines out of every floor of this charismatic property, while it continues to welcome guests from every corner of the globe, there’s a palpable sense of modernity too, of moving with the times whilst respecting the past. ► Sep-Nov 2018 The Cultured Traveller 187