The doors first opened in 1897.

Cork’s Metropole Hotel is celebrating 125 years in business on MacCurtain Street, with a new cocktail list to toast an incredible roll call of very famous guests.

Celebrities to have stayed over at The Met include Oscar-winning actors, producers and directors, Nobel laureate writers, and Grammy award-winning singers. The home of the Cork Jazz Festival, it wasn’t always party central; a ‘dry hotel’ for several decades, the venue was once advertised as “Ireland’s Finest Unlicensed Hotel”.

Designed by architect Arthur Hill and built to the highest standards and opulence of the day by John Delaney and Co Builders, the hotel was owned by the Musgrave family of merchants until 1977 when it was sold to a consortium of local businessmen. Now part of Trigon Hotels, it employs more than 100 people.

“Over the years the Metropole has hosted many thousands of weddings and is even reported to have hosted King Edward VII for tea on the roof when he visited Cork in 1903 for the city’s Great Exhibition.” a spokesperson told us.

“The Metropole made headlines around the world in the 1950s when British actress Dawn Addams stayed there. She visited the city in 1957 for the Cork Film Festival which was screening her film ‘A King in New York’. Her requests for a bath of milk were refused by the hotel manager Douglas Vance as the people of Cork were finding it hard to make ends meet at the time.”

Other notable guests include actors Gregory Peck and James Mason, directors Walt Disney, Vittoria de Sica and John Huston, writers John Steinbeck and Frank O’Connor as well as legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald.

To mark its 125th birthday, the hotel will be running tours for guests throughout the summer.