As one of the world's fashion capitals — and a city with a tremendous amount of wealth — Paris has plenty of demand for elegant high-end luxury hotels. And thanks to a long-established grand palace tradition, Parisian 5 star luxury hotels are heavily influenced by their historical roots. These hotels take themselves seriously, and why not? At this end of the scale they're among the finest anywhere in the world.
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Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements (like neighborhoods). They spiral outwards in a clock-wise direction. The arrondissements are surrounded by the périphérique, a ring highway.
16th Arr. (Trocadéro)
Suffice it to say that the Saint James is anything but typical. In Paris an hôtel particulier, a freestanding house, is unusual enough — something like the Saint James, almost a country-style château, surrounded by a wall and garden, is vanishingly rare. And now that it's open for business as a 5 star luxury hotel, it's almost too much to take. Our English teachers taught us that something either is or is not unique — there are no such things as degrees of uniqueness. But then they've never stayed at the Saint James, which is, grammar be damned, one of the most unique hotels we've ever seen. More...
263 Rooms
65 Verified Reviews
374 
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8th Arr. (Champs-Elysées/Madeleine)
The Fouquet's Barrière is meant to be a 21st-century palace hotel, a contemporary complement to the likes of classic five-stars like Le Crillon or the Plaza Athenée. In this it lands pretty much right on the mark. The interiors, by Jacques Garcia, are the very picture of modern (not modernist) luxury — they look to us pretty much as the Ritz's classic interiors must have looked to the hotel critics of the year 1898. And the location, a stone's throw (underhand, gently) from the Champs-Elysées, is the location of a hotel that doesn't shy from the spotlight. More...
75 Rooms
5 Verified Reviews
51
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1st Arr. (Musée du Louvre/Les Halles)
Sometimes the name pretty much says it all. On one level that's true of the Grand Hôtel du Palais Royal, which isn't shy about pointing out that it's the only luxury hotel near the Palais Royal — in fact it overlooks the royal gardens, and is thus mere yards from the Louvre and the Tuileries as well. This Grand Hôtel feels like the current last word in luxury hospitality design, and sums up the high-end Paris of today in much the same way the great grand hotels of centuries past were perfect summations of their own historical moments. More...
68 Rooms
68 Verified Reviews
175
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8th Arr. (Champs-Elysées/Madeleine)
Paris is full of design statements of all shapes and sizes — but few, it must be said, feel quite as tailor-made. One, the historical surroundings themselves, in this case an 18th-century courtyard townhouse, and two, the designer, Michele Bönan, who's something of an architectural Method actor, able to subsume his personal style into the work at hand. The result is that the Marquis feels less like a design statement and more like a stunningly luxe, historically aware yet stylishly contemporary mansion-hotel — which is rather the point. More...
15 Suites
18 Verified Reviews
126
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1st Arr. (Musée du Louvre/Les Halles)
Nicknamed "The Hotel of Kings," the Meurice has played host to everyone from Queen Victoria and the Maharajah of Jaipur to the King and Queen of Spain. For more than a hundred years the Meurice has been, for many, the quintessential French hotel. Reflecting its uninterrupted attachment to the French art of living, Le Meurice is a magical, serene place, where the refined splendors of 18th-century architecture meet the latest in contemporary comfort and elegance. It was the place you went to for Brillat-Savarin-esque banquets and to sip tea in the red velvet salon. More...
160 Rooms
16 Verified Reviews
119
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1st Arr. (Musée du Louvre/Les Halles)
Luxury-hotel junkies were licking their chops for ages before this one opened. Paris is a city that's no stranger to high-end luxury hospitality, and it was long clear that a Mandarin Oriental would have to be something special, even by the company's lofty standards, if it was going to make a dent here. This is the rarest of things in Paris, a contemporary-style hotel building, and not an unstylish one, as a dream team of architects and designers was assembled and tasked with creating an environment that's suitably modern yet still suitably Parisian, with a healthy dose of Art Deco influence, a tribute to the building's historic roots. More...
138 Rooms
2 Verified Reviews
33
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8th Arr. (Champs-Elysées/Madeleine)
Underneath the recent redesign by Philippe Starck is not some fly-by-night boutique, but an impeccably crafted and luxurious five-star hotel, with all the trappings: Clarins spa, conference space, kids' club (arranged upon request), even a "junket room" with extra sitting space for the journalists who've come to interview you. More...
149 Rooms
9 Verified Reviews
86
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3rd Arr. (Le Marais)
This chateau-styled boutique hotel is blessed with a remarkable location, on the Place des Vosges, in the Marais, in the heart of historic Paris. It is housed in an eighteenth-century mansion, and the décor is full-tilt historical luxury — no stark modernism on display, and nothing that could reasonably be called "minimal." Instead one finds tapestries, oak beams, luxurious fabric wall coverings, striped period furniture, even reproduction oil paintings. More...
54 Rooms
105 Verified Reviews
350
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2nd Arr. (La Bourse)
Leave the tourists to gawk at the ostentatious facade of the luxury Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme (currently obscured by scaffolding, but still). The smart money is on— and presumably in — the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, just steps away, a row of discreetly converted Haussmann-style office blocks with only a small sign to mark the way. Here, of course, the interior's the thing; designed by the American architect Ed Tuttle, it's cut from the same cloth as his masterful Eastern-modernist Amanresorts or his equally stylish and subtle Park Hyatt Milano. More...
153 Rooms
1 Verified review
88
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8th Arr. (Champs-Elysées/Madeleine)
The most well-mannered of the Paris grand luxury hotels is the Bristol, named after an English lord and a bishop. It is also by far the most reserved. Rather appropriately, it's where Newland Archer stays in that final, heartbreaking scene in Wharton's Age of Innocence, when he goes to see Madame Olenska and, at the last minute, holds back. There is something about the Bristol that inspires both romance and restraint. Like a frosted cake, the Bristol is creamy Art Deco on the outside, and decadent 18th-century within. The pool is one of the few in Paris, and though small, it is beautiful, enclosed in glass and bathed in Parisian sunlight. More...
188 Rooms
7 Verified Review
73
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