The guests are often in key with the décor: beautifully preserved, highly pedigreed and finely burnished specimens of the fin de siècle.

A grand old odalisque should never deign to turn housewife.

Its oak paneling is rectory English; the marble in its bathrooms sometimes outdoes the tombstones of the Medici; and the salutes of the older bellhops seem imported from Windsor Castle.

A glassy mountain range of exposed offices; on a clear day you can look through the windows and see as many as 6,000 coffee breaks at once.

Guests who stay at the Hilton are paying premium dollars for a safe, secure, well-run hotel, and they deserve to have that. I don't know what's worse, all the Hilton violations or the way they keep covering them up.

We had guests here, so it was something of an inconvenience.