Skip to Content
 

Hôtel Bristol

The Hôtel Bristol in Paris was located at 3 and 5, Place Vendôme, near the site of the later Hôtel Ritz. The Bristol comprised two hôtels particuliers: number 3 was originally called Hôtel Giraud and was built in 1720; and number 5 was called Hôtel Durfort and was built in 1718. In 1816, the Hôtel Bristol opened for business. At the time, it was one of the biggest and most luxurious hotels in Paris, with all the latest comforts: a bath on each floor and recently-invented gas lighting. The author Charles Dickens mentions staying at the Bristol in his diary of 1844, and he used the hotel as a location in his novel Bleak House in 1851. The Baedeker’s Paris of 1907 cites the Bristol among the top hotel addresses of Paris. But with the opening of Cézar Ritz’s new Hôtel Ritz on June 1, 1898, the Bristol went into decline. By the time of the First World War, the hotel had ceased to exist.