In the Golden '20s, anyone who was anybody visiting Berlin stayed at the Hotel Adlon: from Henry Ford and John D. Rock-e-fel-ler to Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford.
Then came World War II, followed by the country's division, and what was once the height of glamour turned out to be smack up against the Berlin Wall - on the communist side.Now, seven years after unification, Berlin is frantically rebuilding to reclaim its role as Germany's capital. A $240 million Hotel Adlon officially opened Saturday for dignitaries, celebrities or anyone else who can afford room prices of up to more than $2,000 a night.
"People get excited by myths and marble, glitter and gold, legends and luxury - in the end, the whole wide world that you can discover here," Mayor Eberhard Diepgen said at the opening ceremony.
He said Berlin played host to the world at the Hotel Adlon "and so shall it be again."
President Roman Herzog cut the red ribbon in front of the 337-room hotel, located next to the Brandenburg Gate and across from the future site of the U.S. Embassy in the heart of Berlin.
Exactly 90 years ago, Kaiser Wilhelm II attended the opening of the original Adlon, a luxury hotel made in Art Nouveau style to match Berlin's imperial aspirations. He even kept rooms there, and would stop by regularly for a hot bath since his castle down the street had no tub.
The hotel became the place for Germany's upper-crust to see and be seen, its salons and ballrooms always full with parties, weddings and afternoon tea dances.
Its guest register reads like a Who's Who of the time: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Enrico Caruso, Thomas Mann, Marlene Dietrich. Greta Garbo checked in, both in real life and with John Barrymore in the 1932 movie "Grand Hotel," which was modeled after the Berlin landmark.
The Adlon also became known as neutral territory in the turbulent 1930s and during the war, where important people of many nationalities and political views could talk frankly. Famed reporter William L. Shirer described watching a 1941 British air raid there.
Toward the end of the fighting, the hotel was turned into a military hospital and suffered relatively little damage when the Soviets took it over in May 1945.
But a few days later, a disastrous fire broke out; legend says it was started by a Russian soldier's cigarette. The hotel ended up a burned-out shell.
The East Germans took over the property, renovated the building and reopened it as a hotel. But with the Berlin Wall next door, the prewar luster was gone, and in the 1970s they turned it into a dormitory. In 1984, most of the original building was torn down.
Work on the new seven-story Hotel Adlon, now part of the luxury Kempinski chain, began in 1994. Floors and door frames are of high-quality limestone, furnishings of cherry and other rich woods, ceilings with gold-leaf. The original elephant fountains are gurgling again.
The hotel began accepting guests earlier this summer, but the two presidential suites - the $2,200 rooms - won't be finished for another week. They each have reinforced walls, bulletproof windows and video monitoring systems. Cheaper single rooms start at $233 a night.
Film director Percy Adlon, the great-grandson of the original hotelier Lorenz Adlon, attended Saturday's grand opening.
"The Adlon was, the Adlon is Berlin," he said.