Grand Hotel is a hotel in Oslo, Norway. The hotel is best known as is the annual venue of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Grand Hotel is situated in a very central location on the main thoroughfare, the Karl Johans gate, between the Norwegian Parliament building and the Royal Palace. It is within walking distance of Oslo's main shopping and cultural areas, as well as its sights. The hotel was opened in 1874 and is one of the most traditional hotels in Norway.
Each year the hotel hosts the annual Nobel Peace Prize banquet, and the prize winners stay in the Nobel suite at the hotel. Roald Dahl stayed here when young this is where his inspiration came from to do his autobiographical book, Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984).
The hotel has several restaurants. These include "Grand Café", where Henrik Ibsen used to eat every day; the "Restaurant Julius Fritzner", named after Julius Fritzner, the man who founded the hotel in 1874; and "Palmen Restaurant", a traditional and stylish lunch restaurant.
Grand Hotel is a classical style building with white granite facade and clock tower. The hotel has 290 rooms. The hotel is affiliated with Rica Hotels, a chain of approx. 90 hotels located in Norway and Sweden.
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or hotel:
“If the Christ were content with humble toilers for disciples, that wasn’t good enough for our Bert. He wanted dukes’ half sisters and belted earls wiping his feet with their hair; grand apotheosis of the snob, to humiliate the objects of his own awe by making them venerate him.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)