Aristocrats of the Continent

Most have grudgingly added air conditioning, but that is about the only serious concession to modernity made by the great old resort hotels of the Continent. Tourists who need cellophane-wrapped water glasses may take their business elsewhere.

Stays are shorter and guest lists less gilded nowadays, but there are still enough old-rich, old-faithful families who return year after year to keep Europe's deluxe palaces filled nearly to capacity. For $30 and up for a double room, they get majestic grounds and baronial interiors that evoke the glories of la belle epoque, as well as pluperfect service from staffers who frequently outnumber guests, have seemingly been around forever, and never forget a visitor's face or the name that goes with it. Among the continental standouts:

P:Negresco, in Nice, is one of the French Riviera's "Grands Cinq" (the other four: Monte Carlo's Hotel de Paris, Cannes's Carlton, Beaulieu-sur-Mer's La Reserve, Cap d'Antibes' Hotel du Cap). It is also the most colorful, with its pink-and-green cupola, its doorman in blue knee socks, red pants, buckled shoes and jaunty red cockade, its one-ton Baccarat crystal chandelier in the lounge--and a main floor men's room copied from Napoleon's campaign tent, with toilet paper in saddle bags and spigots of 18-karat gold. No two guest rooms are alike, and once a guest settles on a favorite, he is likely to insist on the same room year after year. Three suites are patterned after the chambers of Louis XIV, XV and XVI. But Sophia Loren favors No. 414, the so-called Royal Suite, copied from Josephine's boudoir at Malmaison.

P: Grand-Hotel de 1'Europe in Bad Gastein, Austria. Since the 15th century when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III discovered the therapeutic effects of Bad Gastein's thermal waters, the tiny Alpine village has been called "the Spa of Kings." Kaiser Wilhelm spent 20 seasons there, and it remains a favored haven for pashas and potentates. The sprawling, four-story hotel, opened in 1909, boasts bathrooms with 7-ft.-sq. tubs, marble floors and walls, and taps for mineral as well as plain water. P:-Park-Hotel Adler in Hinterzarten, Germany. An ancient Black Forest inn that dates back to 1446, the Adler has been in the Riesterer family for 14 generations, during which time everybody slept there--from Marie Antoinette and Napoleon to Goebbels and Adenauer. One of the hotel's popular additions is a glassed-in swimming pavilion in the garden, navigable even when winter snows pile up six feet deep. But the main attraction remains the cuisine, a fact that prompted the Riesterers to equip every bathroom with a scale--thoughtfully set back 1 1/2 kg. (roughly 3 Ibs.). P: San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Italy. A converted monastery, one of its cloisters 600 years old, the San Domenico has been a hotel since 1896. Part of its appeal is the monkish ambiance, part the views of Mount Etna and the Sicilian seascape. Though rooms are air-conditioned, most guests leave their windows open to enjoy the perfume from orange, lemon and almond trees in the garden beneath. Winter used to be the peak season, and in those days, recalls Night Porter Antonino Cappelli, as few as three titled families would fill the whole hotel with their retinues, and it took a mule train to fetch their belongings from the railroad station. Now spring and summer are the busy months, and, says Cappelli, "today they come with a flight bag containing a change of underwear." P: Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastian, Spain. Queen Maria Cristina started it all back in 1912, when the city built a five-story hotel to accommodate the countless chamberlains, ministers, officers, grandees and courtiers who followed her to Miramar, the royal summer residence on the Bay of Biscay. Led by the Duke of Alba, the Duke of Lerma and the Duke of Pinohermoso (who once commandeered the couch in the ladies' powder room rather than sleep in another hotel), the Spanish aristocracy still faithfully flocks to the Maria Cristina every summer. "We cater to a certain class of people who no longer have the money their grandparents had," says Director Abelardo Bellver, "but they do still have the very same tastes."

P: Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France. Like the nearby Maria Cristina, the Palais is the expression of a royal whim: Emperor Napoleon III built it as a summer residence in 1854 to please his wife Eugenie. The palace closed when the dynasty fell, but it reopened as a hotel in 1894 and has been one of the world's finest ever since. La specialite de la maison is pamper le guest. Winston Churchill became a regular only after the hotel at its own expense installed a custom-built, old-fashioned bathtub complete with bronze legs, just like the one in his London town house. Says Palais General Manager Roger Boltz: "As long as there are people who want to live in a select and secluded environment or achieve visible social status--and this means until the end of mankind--places like ours have a function to fill. They will never disappear."

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