The lobby lounge of the new Trump hotel in Washington DC is filled with people seated on blue velvet couches under glittering chandeliers that would look at home in the Palace of Versailles. A bell rings, and, to a ripple of applause, a waiter slices the top off a bottle of champagne with a sabre. The glass-encased cork flies across the room and skids across the polished marble floor.

Opened last September, two months before Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States, the hotel occupies the prestigious Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue. The location is prime, being on the street that connects the White House at one end to the US Capitol, home of Congress, at the other. Constructed in 1899, the building’s pièce de résistance is its 96-metre clock tower, the third-tallest structure in DC.

Beneath a row of billowing Stars and Stripes flags, the main entrance is blocked off by metal barricades (access is from the side, on 11th Street). I see a man stop to stick his middle finger up at the gilded Trump International Hotel sign, and take a photo on his phone. The fact that the Trump organisation is leasing this landmark from the government has caused controversy, but federal agency the General Services Administration says the agreement is valid.