Croatia hotel toasts dizzying century of stars, sovereigns and champagne
The most glamorous and storied hotel in the Balkans is 100 years old this month and is still packing in the stars from Shakira to David Beckham.
Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were both guests in its heyday with a galaxy of Hollywood legends from Elizabeth Taylor to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock crossing the Iron Curtain to hang out in its Art Deco bar.
Others came to gamble in its casino -- the only one allowed in then Communist Yugoslavia.
Robert Mitchum, Pierce Brosnan and Richard Chamberlain all starred in films shot in the hotel, which was built close to the Croatian capital's main railway station to accommodate passengers on the Orient Express, the luxury train that ran between Paris and Istanbul.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II loved its Dalmatian seafood dishes so much she asked to see the chef before presenting him with a gold coin.
But it has not been all glitz for the grand hotel since it opened its doors for the first time on April 22, 1925.
Gestapo
The Nazis turned it into a Gestapo headquarters during World War II and it served as a soup kitchen for the city's starving population after the Germans surrendered to Yugoslav partisans in May 1945.
From the beginning, the Esplanade was the centre of Zagreb's social whirl, hosting the Danish silent screen superstar Asta Nielsen as well as Josephine Baker, the US-born queen of the Paris cabarets, who was greeted by a huge crowd on her arrival.
Despite calls to ban her notorious banana skirt dance, Baker's Zagreb show went ahead.
In 1964 the Esplanade became the first Eastern European hotel to join the US Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, which was owned by the Pan Am airline.
"It was revolutionary," former manager Amelia Tomasevic told AFP.
In those days "the West and capitalist way of doing business were not (seen as) compatible with socialism," she added.
But somehow the "larger than life" hotel pulled it off, hosting fashion shows from top French designers and serving French cheeses and champagne by the glass.
'Window on world'
"The Esplanade was a window on the world for Zagreb and the whole country... bringing a lot of good, interesting and international things during rather difficult times," Tomasevic said.
The great Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza described the hotel's Oleander Terrace, a popular dining venue with a beautiful view, as the "border between Europe and the Balkans".
And during the Balkan wars of the 1990s it was the de facto headquarters for many foreign journalists.
But since the conflict ended in 1995 the hotel has gone back to hosting an ever-changing cast of celebrity guests.
General manager Ivica Max Krizmanic said he has been under the Esplanade's spell for 33 years.
He began working there while a student as a doorman "but I'm still here", he joked.
"I fell in love with the hotel, it got under my skin." He stayed on to work as a porter, concierge and on reception before becoming manager 13 years ago.
And guests also pick up on that too, with French businessman Benjamin Besquent saying its "nice to stay in a hotel with history".
© 2025 AFP
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French Expression of the Day: Pleurer comme une madeleine
Why do I need to know pleurer comme une madeleine ? Because it can be confusing to imagine why a madeleine cake might cry. What does it mean? Pleurer comme une madeleine – roughly pronounced pler-ay kohm oon mahd-eh-lenn - translates literally to 'cry like a Madeleine' which means to sob or cry a lot. A similar expression in English might be to cry one's eyes out, or to cry like a baby. The French expression is biblical in origin - it refers to Mary Magdalene, known in the religious text as a former prostitute. In the Bible, there is a scene where Mary Magdalene covered Jesus' feet in tears as she confessed her sins and received forgiveness. Advertisement French has had many expressions involving Mary Magdalene, prior to the 19th century, if one was to ' faire la Madeleine ' (make the Madeleine' that meant to 'feign repentance.' In the 19th century, the expression pleurer comme une Madeleine became popular, in part due to its use by the classic writer Balzac. Over time, the phrase has come to describe a person whose tears or weeping is considered to be excessive or unjustified, though it can also be used to simply describe someone who is crying a lot. In the first sense, the expression might be more similar to the English one of 'crocodile tears.' It has nothing to do with the delicious little shell-shaped sponge cake known as a madeleine , although the cake (via the author Marcel Proust) has inspired its own expression une madeleine de proust , which means a taste, smell, sight or sound that brings back a rush of memories or intense emotions. Use it like this J'ai dit à ma fille d'arrêter de pleurer comme une madeleine après avoir dû rendre le jouet de son frère qu'elle avait pris sans demander la permission. – I told my daughter to stop crying her eyes out over having to give back her brother's toy that she had taken without permission. On ne savait pas si ses larmes étaient authentiques quand elle pleurait comme une madeleine, mais le spectacle a duré longtemps. – We did not know if the tears were authentic when she was sobbing her heart out, but the ordeal went on for a long time.
