History of notoriety key to these hotel rooms

August 14, 2011|By Christopher Klein, Globe Correspondent

Most hotel rooms are nothing special: an uncomfortable bed shrouded in a garish comforter over here, a bolted-down television set over there. A select few, however, are branded with pop culture everywhere you turn. Stamped with the legacies of previous guests, these rooms will be forever immortalized in books and “E! True Hollywood Story’’ episodes.

These rooms generally gain their notoriety as stages for politicians and celebrities behaving badly (Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Room 2806 of the Sofitel New York and Charlie Sheen and the Plaza Hotel’s Eloise Suite being just the latest examples). While they have been the backdrops for drug overdoses, murders, and sex scandals, they have also inspired flashes of artistic genius. For a break from the ordinary, check into one of these famous - and infamous - rooms:

ROOM 1742, Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Montreal Spending a week in a hotel bed might sound blissfully relaxing, but it was pure bedlam when John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their second bed-in for peace here in 1969. Fans, celebrities, and as many as 150 journalists a day crashed the couple’s pad. Asked by one reporter what they were trying to achieve, Lennon replied: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.’’ A peace anthem was instantly born, and on June 1, 1969, the pair - with vocal help from Timothy Leary and Tom Smothers among others - recorded “Give Peace a Chance’’ in what today is the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Suite, which features framed gold records of the song and photographs of the couple. (For a trans-Atlantic two-fer, stay at the John and Yoko Suite at the Amsterdam Hilton, where the pair held their first bed-in during their March 1969 honeymoon.) 514-861-3511, www.fairmont.com/queenelizabeth

ROOM 118, Cadogan Hotel, London Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde was arrested in this Knightsbridge hotel room in 1895 on the charge of “gross indecency.’’ His crime? A homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. John Betjeman’s poem “The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’’ should be required reading for anyone checking into the Oscar Wilde Suite today. (Wilde’s fans can also cross the English Channel and stay in Room 16 of L’Hotel in Paris where the bedridden writer uttered, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.’’ On Nov. 30, 1900, the wallpaper emerged victorious.) 011-44-20-7235-7141, www.cadogan.com

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