The 1919 Peace conference – locations
Posted by an American subscriber:
Lawrence’s letters, if I recall correctly, indicate he stayed at the Hotel Continental, room 98 while at the Versailles Conference. Does this hotel still exist, and, if so, does the room still have the same number?
Where exactly (in what buildings) was the Versailles Conference held?
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Comment by a French subscriber:
The letter to his family of Jan. 30, 1919, mentioning the Hotel Continental was published in Home Letters and again in Malcolm Brown’s Selected Letters edition (pp. 162-3). The hotel, now called the Intercontinental, is located 3 rue de Castiglione, near the Place Vendôme.
J.N. Lockman seems to have done some personal investigations into the matter. He discusses the vexed question of Paris hotels in Meinertzhagen’s Diary Ruse (1995), pp. 45-48: the British Delegation was housed at the Hotel Majestic – now an international conference center – on the Avenue Kléber in the 16th arrondissement, a half-hour’s walk from the Continental. Lockman notes that the Hejaz Delegation stayed at the Continental before moving to a “rented mansion at 72 avenue du Bois de Boulogne (today avenue Foch).” Lawrence had closer formal ties to the Hejaz Delegation than to the British Delegation, which presumably explains why he was not put up at the Majestic, at least during his first Paris stay (Jan.-May 1919).
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Posted by Yagitani, Ryoko, Japan
The Paris Peace Conference (18 January – 6 May 1919) was held mainly in the two buildings:
1) Quai d’Orsay (the French Foreign Office; see NPG Catalogue No.181) where the general assembly and “Council of Ten” meetings took place.
2) Hotel de Crillon (10 Place de la Concorde, next to the American Embassy) where the American Delegation stayed and “Council of Five/Four/Three” meetings took place.
On 7 May 1919 the stage moved to Versailles, Trianon Palais Hotel, then the Chateau de Versailles.