[3] The hotel's interior furnishings highlight the nineteenth-century Viennese elegance with ornate marble, hand-carved statues, and massive crystal chandeliers.

[3] In the lobby, the Royal Staircase leads up to suites and rooms that are also illuminated by magnificent chandeliers hanging from the high stucco ceilings.

Adolf Hitler, who worked at the hotel as a day laborer during his youthful period as a virtual tramp in Vienna, returned following the 1938 Anschluss as an honored guest, and had a permanent suite.

In 1994, Starwood acquired CIGA and merged it into The Luxury Collection, an assemblage of historic and venerable hotels that have similar grandeur as the Imperial.

Before the Second World War, the Imperial had partly been owned by Samuel Schallinger, who was forced to sell it in 1938 due to the Nazi persecution of Jews.

[6] Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish Austrian survivor of the Nazi death camps who dedicated his life to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust, celebrated his 90th birthday at the Hotel Imperial in 1998 with a kosher dinner party.