On summer evenings, you can – you should – step outside onto the terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. Tuxedoed barmen glide between discreetly spaced tables bearing Bellinis and Venetian spritzes. Opulent, sumptuous, unabashedly decadent, Bar Longhi folds you into an embrace of Murano wall lamps and Fortuny fabrics, of marble and mirrors.
Today, vines grow rampant through the arched windows, reaching over the zinc bar to the banquettes where people sit hugger-mugger over a Kir – in conversation, inevitably, with a stranger who may turn out to be the curator of the Guggenheim. An unpretentious hotel reception area and waiting room for the terrace restaurant, the bar is also the heart of an establishment that attracted artists along the lines of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, who paid the owner with canvases in lieu of cash (a Picasso is displayed with the casual lack of ceremony that defines the place). It’s a tiny space: a handful of wooden tables strewn with scarlet ashtrays. The cool crepuscular gloom is a respite from sun-baked, crowded streets. La Colombe d’Or, Saint-Paul de Vence, France It has lost its 1990s shabby-chic charm, the subsidies and the ex-secret police but look out over the elegant central square it adorns, and the romance of the 1930s’ Paris of the East and The Balkan Trilogy comes alive once more. Awkward ex-secret policemen in leather jackets hovered in the shadows sparkling wine and caviar were on tap at ludicrously cheap state-subsidised prices and one of the best Roma bands in the country played. In recent years the hotel had a third coming after a makeover by the Hilton Group.
In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Ceausescus, Bucharest was again such a haunt and the Athénée Palace was again to the fore. In the fevered atmosphere of the 1930s, when Bucharest was a haunt of spies, fascists, revolutionaries and writers, including of course a young Olivia Manning, there was one essential bar for gossip – and classy Romanian “champagne”. The English Bar at the Athénée Palace Hilton, Bucharest They will never forget your usual cocktail (whisky sour) or your usual table (Table Two). The bartenders are the perfect mix of familiar and utterly discreet. The beauty of the place is that everyone is somehow visibly invisible. Although The Fumoir is beloved by the fashion set, it is not unusual to find yourself sitting next to a Hollywood actor or business mogul. Designed by Thierry Despont in the mid-1990s, this glowing jewel box of a Beaux-Arts-inspired space, with its dark plum leather-lined walls and plush dove-grey velvet banquettes, invites its guests into a world that harks back to Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young Things.