The building originated in the late 1890s under Huyn de Vernéville, France’s Résident Supérieur (the highest representative) in Cambodia.
🇰🇭 officially completed around 1910.
🇰🇭 In 1918, the property was purchased by Nicolas K. Manolis, a Greek immigrant.
🇰🇭 Under his ownership throughout the 1920s, it operated as the premier luxury hotel in Phnom Penh.
🇰🇭 The hotel’s most famous and scandalous slice of history belongs to André Malraux, the legendary French novelist, adventurer, and future first Minister of Cultural Affairs under Charles de Gaulle.
🇰🇭 The Heist: In 1923, a young Malraux traveled deep into the Cambodian jungle and hacked off valuable stone bas-reliefs from the ancient temple of Banteay Srei to sell on the Western art market.
🇰🇭 The House Arrest: He was caught by French colonial authorities. While awaiting his high-profile trial in Phnom Penh, he was placed under a form of comfortable house arrest at the Hotel Manolis, spending several months confined to his room here. Ironically, this “temple thief” would go on to lead France’s national architectural preservation and museum expansion drives decades later.
🇰🇭 Post-War Transition & The Squatter Era (1979–Present)
The Evacuation & Return: Like the rest of Phnom Penh, the building was completely abandoned in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated the city’s population.
🇰🇭 Following the fall of the regime in 1979, citizens returned to the ghost city and claimed shelter wherever they could. The grand hotel rooms were partitioned into small apartments. For decades, the upper levels of the building have been home to roughly 30 local Cambodian families.
🇰🇭 The corner space is occupied by Le Manolis, a French bistro and wine bar that deliberately preserved the building’s name and original architectural bones to honor its long, eccentric history.
3june2026