Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris

Avenue George V was opened in 1858 as avenue de l'Alma. On 14 July 1918 it was renamed after George V, King of the United Kingdom (1865–1936), and avenue Pierre-Ier-de-Serbie, at the hotel's corner, was renamed the same day after King Peter I of Serbia.^[1]

The George V was built as a hotel. A building permit published in May 1926 names its owners as the firm Lazarus, Nordmann et Cie and its architects as Constant Lefranc and Georges Wybo. In March 1928, while the hotel was being prepared for opening, its administrator appointed a deputy manager of the Hôtel de Crillon as its director. By late April 1928 guests were staying at "the new Hotel George V", according to the Paris edition of the New York Herald.^[2][3][4]

In 1929 the hotel was the meeting place of the international committee of experts, chaired by the American Owen D. Young, that drew up a new schedule for Germany's payments of First World War reparations. The committee met there from February and signed its report in the hotel's large salon on the evening of 7 June 1929. Its proposals became known as the Young Plan.^[5][6][7]

During the German occupation of Paris, the German writer Ernst Jünger was an army officer stationed in the city. His diary records several evenings at the hotel in 1941 and 1942 with the German staff officer Hans Speidel and others.^[9]

In 1950 the American actor and dancer Gene Kelly was staying at the hotel while casting the film An American in Paris. The French dancer Leslie Caron later recalled going to the George V to meet him there before she was cast in the film.^[10][11]

Kingdom Hotels, the company of the Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, says it bought the hotel from the Forte group in 1996. After a two-year renovation it reopened in December 1999 as the Four Seasons Hotel George V, with interiors by Pierre-Yves Rochon. Its spa opened in July 2018.^[12][13]