Raffles Hotel Le Royal

In November 1929 a new hotel opened at the foot of Wat Phnom, on a boulevard the French administration had just laid out through the north of the city. Raffles Hotel Le Royal still stands on that street, now called Rukhak Vithei Daun Penh, and it is the oldest hotel in Phnom Penh by a wide margin. Few buildings in the Cambodian capital have seen as much.

History

The architect was Ernest Hébrard, the French urban planner responsible for much of colonial Hanoi and for the hill station of Dalat. Le Royal was built for the officials, planters and visitors of French Indochina and it served them until independence in 1953, then the diplomats and journalists of the Sihanouk years. Jacqueline Kennedy stayed in November 1967 on her way to Angkor; the bar still mixes the cocktail created for her visit. In the early 1970s the hotel became the base of the foreign press corps covering the war with the Khmer Rouge, a period later portrayed in the film The Killing Fields. The hotel closed after April 1975 and reopened in the 1980s under the name Samaki, in poor condition. Raffles took the lease, spent two years on restoration and reopened the house under its original name in 1997.

Architecture and design

Hébrard's building is a three-storey block in cream render under a tiled roof, with deep verandas, shuttered windows and a central staircase whose wrought-iron balustrade survived the war years. The 1990s restoration added garden wings in the same idiom, so the original front now reads as the public face of a larger compound built around two pools. Interiors mix dark timber, cement tiles and ceiling fans with modern comforts; Khmer motifs appear in carved panels, lacquer and silk rather than in pastiche.

Rooms and suites

Accommodation is divided between the 1929 building and the garden wings. The older rooms have the higher ceilings and timber floors, the newer ones open towards the pools and frangipani. Suites occupy the corners of the original block, and the largest are named after figures from the hotel's history. Butler service is offered on the suite floors.

Dining

The Elephant Bar is the room most guests remember: a long bar with elephant motifs on the cornices and the rattan chairs of the correspondents' era. Restaurant Le Royal is the formal dining room, serving French cooking alongside royal Khmer recipes. Café Monivong is the all-day restaurant by the pool, and afternoon tea is served in the lobby lounge.

Wellness

Raffles Spa occupies part of the garden wing, with treatment rooms, a fitness room and the two outdoor pools, one of them reserved for quiet swimming.

Weddings and events

Le Royal has hosted receptions and official dinners since the colonial period. Weddings are held in the garden between the pools and in the ballroom; meeting rooms off the lobby take smaller groups. Capacities depend on the layout and are confirmed by the hotel's events team.

Location

Wat Phnom, the hill temple that gives the city its name, is at the end of the street. The French quarter around the central post office, the riverside along Sisowath Quay, the Royal Palace and the National Museum are all within two kilometres to the east and south. Phnom Penh International Airport lies about ten kilometres west, and the new Techo International Airport, opened in 2025, about twenty kilometres south of the city. For a luxury hotel in Phnom Penh with a past this long, the setting is unusually calm: a tree-lined street a block from the river.