Chateau Marmont is one of Los Angeles’ most historic and mythical hotels. Far more than a B’n’B, this place houses some of Hollywood’s best kept secrets.

In 1926 an attorney, Fred Horowitz, hired architect Arnold Weitzman to build an apartment building near Sunset Boulevard, and told him to draw inspiration from the Château d’Amboise in France’s Loire Valley.

What he built was a seven-storey behemoth, luxuriously decorated with spires, turrets and towers. It holds 63 bedrooms in a structure made of steel and concrete – making it able to withstand the earthquakes that usually topple LA buildings.

Situated just off the strip, it provides a perfect getaway for a-list celebrities. The interiors, despite being over 80 years old, manage to evoke the golden age of Hollywood without fetishizing it or turning it into a nostalgia fest.

It blends the old Hollywood with the new in a symphony of indulgence. Just take a look at the hotel’s old-school website.

List of Celebrity Guests and Visitors to the Chateau Marmont

• Howard Hughes
• Rock Hudson
• Heath Ledger
• Errol Flynn
• John Belushi
• Bob Dylan
• John Lennon
• Yoko Ono
• James Dean
• Natalie Wood
• Elizabeth Taylor
• Jim Morrison
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Robert DeNiro
• Sofia Coppola
• Sidney Poitier
• Lindsay Lohan
• Clark Gable
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Jean Harlow
• Kristen Stewart
• Robert Pattinson
• Spike Lee
• Greta Garbo
• Mick Jagger

Scandalous Chateau

• John Belushi famously died of a drug overdose in one of the Chateau’s bungalows in 1982
• Clark Gable and Jean Harlow were said to have had romantic trysts at the hotel
• Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack there
• Members of Led Zeppelin rode their motorcycles through the lobby one night
• As chronicled in the Oliver Stone film The Doors, Jim Morrison stayed there, and injured himself when he fell after hanging from a drain pipe
• Photographer Helmut Newton crashed into a wall by the driveway of the Chateau and died, in 2004

[Source : About.com, Good To Be Bad]