The China Mail - 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".

M.Chau--ThChM