Charles De Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle is among the distinguished guests who stayed at Raffles Hotel Le Royal, adding French political history to a Phnom Penh landmark shaped by colonial architecture. Shaded courtyards, garden pools and the Elephant Bar keep the hotel's diplomatic past close at hand. The mood is grand but unhurried, with restored rooms that feel connected to the figures who once passed through.

Leonardo DiCaprio joins a guest history at Château Frontenac that also includes Céline Dion, Charles de Gaulle and Charlie Chaplin. Few hotels possess a more cinematic silhouette, rising above Old Québec like a castle created for a film set. Inside, historic rooms and river views sustain the sense of occasion, while the city's cobbled streets begin just beyond the door.

Mandarin Oriental Lutetia carries the artistic soul of Paris's Left Bank into a grand contemporary palace. Serge Gainsbourg treated its jazz-lit rooms as a second home, returning so often that his late-night piano sessions became part of the hotel's Saint-Germain mythology.