Most Romantic Hotel in Paris? Six

The Coco Chanel Suite at the Ritz Paris. Coco Chanel made the Hotel Ritz her home for 37 years. Her three room suite overlooking the Place Vendome, a famous square in the heart of Paris, is available to stay in for $4,300 per night.

What a glamorous way to spend a honeymoon!

The bathroom. Each item and piece of furniture has been researched and restored to recreate the world where the designer lived.

The dining room

If the Coco Chanel Suite doesn’t wow you, how about staying in the Ernest Hemingway or Elton John suite who also both have suites at the Ritz named after them? Choices, choices…

The bedroom

The view from the window

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Most Romantic Hotel in Paris? Cinq

The 5th hotel in my search for the perfect hotel for our honeymoon in Paris.

HÔTEL PARTICULIER MONTMARTRE

Set in its own garden is the Hotel Particulier Montmartre a 19th-century stucco house.

The five suites are designed by contemporary artists. Fashion curator Olivier Saillard’s room ‘Poems & Hats’ is a nod to Magritte in black and white, with hats for lampshades and a clear glass wall separating the bedroom from the marble-fitted, mosaic-tiled bathroom.

‘Vitrine’ is created by sculptor Philippe Mayaux. This is a sexy room with a cabinet full of highly suggestive blown-glass objects and a large steam room.

An artist’s video shot on the premises runs on the DVD player in your room when you arrive and there are classic movies and art books to borrow from the library downstairs.

HÔTEL PARTICULIER MONTMARTRE
23 avenue Junot, Paris
Tel. 00 33 1 53 41 81 40
e-mail: hotelparticulier@orange.fr

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Most Romantic Hotel in Paris? Quatre

LE BELLECHASSE

Christian Lacroix who designed another hotel featured on a previous post on this blog, has also put his signiture atyle to the Hotel Bellechasse, also on the Left Bank, in the 7th arrondissement, a few steps from the Musee d’Orsay. His style is as always anything but minimalist but rich, clashing and lots of fun.

I particularly like the butterfly room

The hotel offers 34 rooms, in seven different decorative styles.

LE BELLECHASSE
8, rue de Bellechasse Paris 75007
Fax : 45-51-52-36
Website : http://www.lebellechasse.com

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Most Romantic Hotel in Paris? Trois

HOTEL DE BOURG TIBOURG

Part Gothic boudoir, part Moroccan harem, the décor of this Empire town house in the Marais (apparently Paris’ version of London’s Notting Hill) district is more like a fantasy film set than a hotel. Especially if that film were a more colourful version of the Addams Family.

Beyond the wrought-iron front doors, the lobby is a dimly lit mixture of neo-gothic, Oriental and period French, with heavy curtains, chests and ornate gold lamps. Downstairs, things get even more dramatic in the stone-walled cellar/breakfast room where blue, leopard-print throne chairs and a huge wall tapestry are lit by black-metal chandeliers complete with flickering, flame-shaped bulbs. From the lobby, a warren of narrow corridors lined in red-velvet leads to 31 rooms. Uniformly dark and small (except on the relatively light sixth floor), they feel like secret dens, and it’s hard to tell if it’s day or night from within.

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Most Romantic Hotel in Paris? Deux

L’HOTEL

Behind the ultra slick website for L’Hotel lies details of a hotel that seems sumptuous, stylish and thoroughly Parisian.

I have fallen in love already.

Originally part of the palace of Queen Margot, the building which is now L’Hotel was made into a Pavillion d’Amour, or a Pavillion of Love, in the early 19th Century.

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go. I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.”
-Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde took up residence at the end of the century, and lived at L’Hotel till the end of his life – though at the time, it was called Hotel Alsace. Room No 16 where is where Wilde died a century ago, now decorated in green with a peacock motif.

By the 1960’s, L’Hotel was the place to stay in Paris, with every famous visitor to the city passing through from Salvador Dali and Princess Grace, to Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This was also a home away from home for the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), who stayed here many times in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

This is the Apartment suite:

Which has its own balcony:

L’Hotel’s heyday has continued unbroken ever since; a major refit at the end of the 1990’s by the renowned designer Jacques Garcia. This saw the private pool and steam room installed in the caves, the creation of the courtyard in the restaurant, as well as a complete overhaul of all the bedrooms and public space.

And the private steam room and Roman bath can be booked for couples’ private use…

L’HOTEL
13, Rue Beaux Arts, 75006 Paris
Tel : +33 1 44 41 99 00
E-mail : reservation@l-hotel.com

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