NEW YORK -- The bill for a night's stay at Manhattan's newly refurbished Plaza Hotel is not just for gold-trimmed Mascioni sheets and white-glove service. It's for legend, history, a cocoon from the noisy, frenetic city and memories.

The Plaza, at 59th Street just off Fifth Avenue, is the only hotel in New York City to be designated a National Historic Landmark. After nearly three years of renovations, it reopened in early March and celebrated its formal opening yesterday.

Under its current owner, Elad Properties, the century-old hotel, designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, has been pared from 805 guest rooms to 282 rooms. The rest of the building has been converted to condominium apartments, one of which recently sold for $50 million.

Standard guest rooms start at $775 a night. This buys a high-ceilinged room of 475 square feet overlooking a courtyard or the street (not Central Park, which is on the residential side of the building), the ministrations of a 24-hour-a-day butler and a bathroom with marble sinks and gold-plated faucets.

For those who require more, there's the 4,000-square-foot Royal Plaza Suite, with three bedrooms, an exercise facility, a media room and a library. That's $20,000 a night. There are numerous options in between.

The furnishings are Louis XV, with graceful swags and gold trim. But the electronics are 21st-century including an iPod dock and a wall-mounted touch screen with which to summon the butler, communicate with the concierge for restaurant reservations and theater tickets, change the temperature in the room or turn on the flat-screen TV.

Over the last century, the Plaza has welcomed celebrities and royalty, and accrued a patina of legends. In 1908, a year after the hotel opened, a Russian princess moved in along with her pet lion cub.

The ballroom, which can hold up to 700 people, has had a face-lift as part of the $400 million renovation and is now a confection of white and gold paint, coy putti, crystal chandeliers and mirrors.

The ballroom is landmarked, but the hotel lobby is brand-new, carved from some former meeting rooms and seamlessly melded with older sections of the building.

The lobby's coffered ceiling, massive chandeliers, tall windows, giant bouquets of orchids and potted palms look as though they'd always been there.

Guests sit in plush chairs and drink champagne -- the lobby has a Champagne Bar -- while attentive waiters bring "light fare," available from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. The most beloved public rooms of the hotel are probably the Oak Room and Oak Bar and the Palm Court. These rooms for drinking and dining are scheduled to reopen in late summer.

The Palm Court has already reopened and is lovelier than ever. The room where breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea and Sunday brunch are served originally had a stained-glass ceiling called a "laylight" because it was illuminated from above. Conrad Hilton bought the hotel in 1943 (for $7.4 million) and destroyed the ceiling when he installed air conditioning in the room. It has been re-created.

The food is better than ever, too (and more expensive). Accompanied by a harpist, afternoon tea is now an exquisite repast of crustless, miniature sandwiches, scones, jam and clotted cream and delicate pastries served with pots of exotic teas. The basic tea costs $60 per person. For an additional $40 per person, guests get caviar, truffles and lobster salad -- and for another $20, a choice of champagne or sherry.

Eloise, the spirited girl who lived at the Plaza as imagined by author Kay Thompson and depicted by Hilary Knight, has yet to have her portrait rehung in its old place overlooking the Palm Court (it will be back), but young girls in charming frocks have already returned to take tea with their parents.

Some of the waiters who used to work in the Palm Court have come back and, like those who came before, may be there long enough to see the girls (and boys) they serve today grow up and come for tea at the Palm Court with children of their own.