Hôtel Regina Louvre

The hotel occupies the western end of the arcaded block along rue de Rivoli between place des Pyramides and rue de l'Échelle. The City of Paris heritage inventory records that the block was built to plans drawn up in 1802 by the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, that the corner building at number 192 was finished in 1831, and that the buildings were meant to house the royal household's guard and staff. The inventory names the block as the present Hôtel Régina and lists it as protected under the city's planning rules. The hotel dates the building differently: its pages call the corner building Second Empire, the period from 1852 to 1870, and in one place say it was built in 1824. The hotel also says the site once held the riding academy of Antoine de Pluvinel, riding master to King Henri IV. The statue of Joan of Arc on horseback in the square outside, by Emmanuel Frémiet, was put up in 1874 and has been a listed historic monument since 1992.^[1][4][5][3]

In 1898 the hotelier Léonard Tauber and his partner Constant Baverez bought the apartment building on the corner, and their company, the Société Hôtel Regina Paris, commissioned the architect Armand Sibien to turn it into a hotel. Sibien kept the arcaded façades. Historic Hotels Worldwide, a membership program for old hotels, says the name honors Queen Victoria. The Hôtel Regina opened in 1900, during the Exposition Universelle. The hotel says that in 1911 and 1912 two leased buildings on rue des Pyramides extended it through to rue Saint-Honoré, where Sibien built a five-story stone façade that still stands but is no longer part of the hotel.^[4][6][7]

By October 1918 the building was the Paris headquarters of the American Red Cross, which had moved there from 4 place de la Concorde. Red Cross photographs of 1918 and 1919, now in the Library of Congress, show Serbian refugee children in the foyer and the Red Cross post office sorting mail for American soldiers. On Sunday 5 May 1919 the Red Cross societies of France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States met at the Hôtel Regina and founded the League of Red Cross Societies, now the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. A marble plaque on the façade records the meeting, and the Federation unveiled a commemorative plaque there on the 75th anniversary, 5 May 1994. The square was called place de Rivoli at the time and was renamed place des Pyramides in 1932.^{[8][9][10][11][12][2]}

Les Hôtels Baverez, the company owned by Constant Baverez's descendants, says that when Léonard Tauber died in 1944 his partner Constant Baverez took control. Françoise Baverez became president of the company in 1981, and Véronique Beauvais-Crefcoeur, a descendant of Constant Baverez, chief executive in 2010. Roof repairs grew into a full restoration from 2013 to 2015. The hotel says the original decorative features were kept, including the glass-paneled elevator, now purely decorative, and that it received its fifth star in 2015. Atout France's current five-star classification, for 98 rooms, dates from 14 February 2022. In 2023 the interior designer Sophie Villepigue redid the English Bar and the restaurant, which reopened as Chez Suzy in 2024.^{[4][7][13][14]}

The hotel is often used as a film location. In The Bourne Identity (2002), Marie Kreutz, played by Franka Potente, walks into the lobby to ask about John Michael Kane, an alias used by Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon. Luc Besson's Nikita (1990) was also filmed there. The hotel's own list adds La Banquière (1980), Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec, Red 2 and Dalida.^[15][5][6]