Windsor Hotel

Windsor Hotel may refer to:

See also

Hotel Windsor (Melbourne)

The Hotel Windsor is a luxury hotel in Melbourne. The Windsor is notable for being Australia's only surviving grand 19th century city hotel and only official "grand" Victorian era hotel. The Hotel Windsor has a 5-star rating and is considered one of the grandest hotels in Melbourne.

The Windsor is situated on Bourke Hill in the Parliament Precinct on Spring Street, and is a Melbourne landmark of high Victorian architecture. The hotel has a significant role in the history of Australia as the place where the Constitution of Australia was drafted in 1898. For much of its 20th Century life the hotel, dubbed the Duchess of Spring Street, was one of the most favoured and luxurious hotels in Melbourne. It has hosted many notable national and international guests.

The hotel is currently planning a major renovation which was required by permit to begin by January 2015.

History

The original hotel was built by shipping magnate George Nipper and designed by Charles Webb in a broadly Renaissance Revival style and was completed in 1884, and named "The Grand". However, Nipper soon sold the building, in 1886, to the a company headed by James Munro and James Balfour. Munro was a politician and the leader of the temperance movement in Victoria, who famously burnt the hotel's liquor licence in public and operated the hotel as a Coffee Palace, now renamed the "Grand Coffee Palace". The building was soon more than doubled in size in 1888, by adding the central section and the north wing, matching the original building, the now internal north wing, and extending the rear wing, all designed again by Charles Webb. Notable features of the expanded hotel included the Ballroom, the impressive main staircase, the distinctive twin mansard roofed towers in the Second Empire style, and the stone sculpture, attributed to John Simpson Mackennal, over the main entrance with male female figures known as 'Peace and Plenty' reclining over the English and Australian Coat of Arms.

Windsor Hotel (Cairo)

The Windsor Hotel (فندق وندسور in Arabic, Hôtel Windsor in French) is an historic hotel in downtown Cairo, Egypt. Constructed in 1893, it is located near Opera Square and across Alfi Bey Street from the site of the former Shepheard's Hotel, of which it once served as an annex. During the First World War, it served as a British Officers Club, and much of its interior and furnishings date to this period. It has been called "an unrestored ode to the days of British colonial travel."

Architecture and History

Originally constructed in 1893 as part of a royal baths complex, the Windsor Hotel is an example of colonial-era neo-Mamluk architecture. Its exterior facade bears strong resemblance to the interior courtyard facades of the 16th century Wikala of El-Ghouri, a caravanserai located in the nearby Khan el-Khalili souk. It is one of the only surviving examples of Khedivial patronage in this neighborhood of Cairo, which once included the Royal Opera House, Royal Mail, and Ezbakeyyah Gardens, in addition to the hammam complex.