8 Unimaginable Lodges The place Well-known Authors Have Lived and Labored

F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t simply sleep right here. In 1925, when it was a personal residence, he rented what was then referred to as the Villa Saint Louis as a summer time place for himself, his spouse Zelda, and their daughter, Scottie. They cherished it a lot that they returned the subsequent two summers, and the creator stored busy socializing with luminaries together with Picasso and Gerald and Sara Murphy, writing Tender Is the Night time, which is ready in Antibes, and serving to rework the coastal fishing villages of the Riviera right into a summer time playground. In 1929, with the Fitzgeralds gone, the villa opened because the Lodge Belles Rives, a landmark resort that continues to get together on, Jazz Age model, and continues to be run by the identical household that launched the property. There’s a seaside membership, a Michelin-starred restaurant (La Passagere), and the Bar Fitzgerald. Annually, the resort awards the Prix Fitzgerald to a author whose work embodies Fitzgerald’s spirit, retaining his legend alive on-site. As for friends, the hope is that they’ll expertise among the pleasure the creator himself felt within the area. A plaque on the lodge is engraved with the next traces from a 1926 letter from Fitzgerald to Hemingway: “With our being again in a pleasant villa on my beloved Riviera (between Good and Cannes), I’m happier than I’ve been for years. It’s a kind of unusual, valuable, and all too transitory moments when every little thing in a single’s life appears to be going effectively.”

As for Hemingway himself, his pleased place appears to have been Solar Valley, Idaho, the place he might do all his favourite issues: hunt and fish in what’s now the Silver Creek Protect, eat and drink at Michel’s Christiana’s restaurant, and write. He found his personal non-public Idaho in 1939 when he was invited to be a celeb author in residence on the Solar Valley Lodge as a part of the property’s PR initiative to draw friends to the brand new resort, which opened in 1937. Hemingway completed For Whom the Bell Tolls there in 1939 whereas staying in Suite 206 with Martha Gelhorn, who turned his third spouse. You possibly can observe in his footsteps by reserving the Celeb Suite named for him (different choices embrace former guests Clint Eastwood and Sonia Henie). However friends in any of the 108 rooms on the property can benefit from the huge spa, outside pool, eating places, and yoga studio — after they’re not out horseback using in summer time, snowboarding in winter, or usually being rugged and outdoorsy, like Papa himself.

This stone sanctuary overlooking a cove within the Mani, one of many windswept peninsulas in Greece’s Peloponnese, comes by its double-billed title, actually. Patrick was the World-Struggle-II-hero-turned-travel-writer who immortalized the area in his travelogue Mani and determined to construct a house there. He recalled seeing “all these wild mountains, and the olives and the water and the islands,” and pondering, “Right here could be a great place to dwell.” Nonetheless, it was former debutante Joan who offered her jewellery to fund the constructing of the villa. Of their wills, they left the property to Greece’s Benaki Museum, which makes use of it as a retreat for students for 9 months of the yr and permits Aria Lodges to supply it to friends through the summer time, thus funding the renovation and maintenance of the place. With Paddy and Joan’s books on the cabinets, their former housekeeper dishing up meals, and the spherical tabletop he rolled down the mountainside to put in in the lounge, the home reverberates with dynamic couple’s personalities all through. However you would know nothing about them and nonetheless love this retreat for the stone steps resulting in the cove under (the place Paddy swam till he was 94), the tree-lined pool, and the infinite views.

When Ian Fleming purchased his property in Jamaica in 1946, he named it after the British naval operation that first introduced him to the island throughout World Struggle II. He wrote all 13 James Bond novels within the villa he had constructed on-site. (Dr. No, Dwell and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun are additionally set on the island.) As we speak, the Fleming Villa is simply one of many lodging choices within the GoldenEye resort advanced, which has grown from Fleming’s unique 15 acres to 52 below the formidable eyes of Chris Blackwell, the founding father of Island Information. (Enjoyable truth: Blackwell bought GoldenEye from Bob Marley, who had purchased it from Fleming.) If not staying within the creator’s former residence, friends can even select from the “seaside huts” on the cove, cottages whose steps lead proper into the lagoon, or roomier villas, all full with outside showers. They’re welcome to follow spycraft or write bestselling thrillers. However they may go for paddleboarding, snorkeling, or kayaking as a substitute. Sunbathing by one of many swimming pools with a tropical drink (heavy on the Blackwell Rum) will not be frowned upon.

A convent for nearly 250 years (from 1621 to 1861), the Lodge Santa Clara then spent the subsequent century and alter as a charity hospital, a jail, and a medical faculty earlier than debuting as a lodge in 1995. An area landmark inside a walled metropolis so historic it’s been named a World Heritage by UNESCO, the Lodge Santa Clara (now a part of the Sofitel Legend Assortment) has all the time been the location of dramatic plot twists. This was true even again in 1949 when then-cub-reporter Gabriel García Marquez went to cowl excavation work within the former convent and witnessed a crypt that held a skeleton with a protracted mane of purple hair. The incident impressed his brief story Of Love and Different Demons. As we speak, lodge friends can tour the identical crypt and a corridor named after the Nobel prize winner, carved with quotes from his books, within the firm of one of many lodge butlers. Spending the day lounging by the pool bar (as soon as the nuns’ orchard) is a wonderful choice, and exploring the magical realist metropolis is an excellent higher one. Nonetheless, you wouldn’t be the primary visitor to whereas away the hours roaming the hallways trying to find hidden confessionals.

Agatha Christie’s beloved second husband was an archaeologist. And whereas he excavated pharaohs’ tombs, the Mrs. stored busy writing Loss of life on the Nile. She penned the blockbuster bestseller in a collection with a Nile view on the Outdated Cataract Lodge. Maybe unsurprisingly, her e book characters stayed on the identical establishment. As we speak, this grand lodge, too, is a part of the Sofitel Legend Assortment, and you’ll venerate Christie’s mahogany desk and wicker chair within the foyer or go to her suite on a strolling tour. The constructing itself could possibly be a historic monument, a Victorian gem relationship again to 1899. (Winston Churchill additionally stayed right here, bumping into Christie greater than as soon as.) If you’re not geeking out over Christie’s suite or sitting in your individual wicker chair watching the feluccas sail by, you possibly can swim within the palm-tree-ringed pool, order flambéed desserts on the 1902 Restaurant on-site, or head off the property to go to the temple of Abu Simbel (with its huge statues of Ramesses II) or the Aswan Botanical Backyard. Simply take a lesson from Christie’s characters and watch your again.

When this luxury lodge was the luxurious non-public residence of the Steyn household, Nelson Mandela, having been launched from jail, stayed with them for six months, finishing his memoir, Lengthy Stroll to Freedom. It was transformed right into a 26-suite lodge in 2020 and has since expanded with extra villas. Nonetheless, Mandela’s affect can nonetheless be seen within the swish reception space, the place the gathering of paintings contains Dean Simon’s “The 5 Faces of Mandela,” which depicts the Nobel Peace Prize winner in varied phases of life from a younger boy to an elder statesman. In fact, there’s additionally the Nelson Mandela Platinum Suite, reachable through a glass elevator and full with a 24-hour butler. (Sure, it was created out of Mandela’s very personal visitor suite when he stayed right here.) 

You’ll benefit from the art-filled halls, the elegant restaurant Qunu, which serves greens grown on-site within the backyard, and the central infinity pool. However should you actually need to observe in Mandela’s footsteps, you’ll additionally e book a go to to the Saxon’s sister property, Shambala, a personal recreation reserve the place Mandela, once more hosted by Steyn, spent summers as South Africa’s first democratically elected president till he died in 2013. At Shambala, you’re liable to identify hippos, leopards, and elephants on the reserve and inside the Nelson Mandela Villa, you’ll discover a Picasso on the wall.

You is likely to be higher off asking which author identified for depicting Vietnam of days passed by didn’t keep on the Metropole fairly than which of them did. The grand lodge opened in 1901 and nearly instantly turned a literary haven. Somerset Maugham wrote The Gentleman within the Parlour, his Asian travelogue, right here, and Graham Greene penned The Quiet American within the lodge whereas on project from Paris Match. Marguerite Duras additionally checked in, and the lodge, with its French haute delicacies restaurant, Le Beaulieu, and grand structure, conjures the ambiance of her novel The Lover, which chronicles a forbidden affair steeped within the nation’s French colonial period. (Sadly, Duras doesn’t have a collection named after her, though Maugham, Greene, and Charlie Chaplin, who honeymooned right here with Paulette Goddard in 1936, do.) 

The nation’s army, in addition to literary, historical past is alive right here, too; when the Bamboo Bar was being renovated in 2011, staff stumbled upon the sealed-off bunker that protected friends — together with well-known activists Jane Fonda and Joan Baez — from 1964 to 1973, throughout what the lodge calls The American Struggle. With over 120 years of historical past behind its stately doorways, the Metropole (the primary lodge in Sofitel’s Legends assortment) is an atmospheric place to write down your travelogue, have your individual illicit romance, or discover the rediscovered bunker.