Paris is having a big year for hotel openings. 2 Martin Brudnizki– developed hotels– the well known Swedish designer’s first 2 jobs in Paris– are slated to open in 2023. Luxury favorites like Rosewood’s Hôtel de Crillon in the eighth arrondissement and Relais & Châteaux’s Saint James Paris in the 16th just recently got upgrades consisting of a new dining establishment for the previous and an interior remodelling and broadened health club for the latter. And, of course, this flurry of openings and transformations is mainly in service of the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will be held in Paris.
However the extremely first opening of the year, beginning the City of Light’s 2023 hospitality frenzy, is also one of the most exciting: Hôtel Dame Des Arts opened on Feb. 1 on Paris’s Left Bank in the sixth arrondissement.
Hôtel Dame Des Arts, part of EQ Group’s portfolio of 18 residential or commercial properties across Europe, is not attempting to be the most glamorous remain in Paris; it’s attempting to provide an experience rooted in Paris’s regional (as in, less touristy) culture. In the heart of Paris’s Latin Quarter, it’s precisely 17 steps from the St. Michel city stop, and an additional 20 to the Seine River and views of Notre Dame cathedral. In a city where a hotel’s area normally either takes advantage of benefit to main attractions or proximity to the coolest red wine bars and trendiest hangouts, Hôtel Dames Des Arts does both.
” What I desire this to become is an artist and cultural hub for Paris,” Imshan Jamal, co-owner of EQ Group, tells me over a round of Negronis in the moody hotel lobby. We’re seated with one of my close friends on an enormous beige banquette, and all I can smell is the hotel’s alluring signature fragrance, a mix of cedar, dry woods, and musk, developed by famous parfumeur Arthur Dupuy.
Just three weeks into the hotel’s life, that values is taking shape. Both nights we dined in the hotel’s restaurant surrounded by art pieces and literature sourced in Paris, “all of which are reflective of the brilliant history of the rive gauche,” Jamal states. (My favorite pieces were framed covers of books by Blaise Cendrars, a pal of rive gauche citizens Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, published by the progressive French publishing home Les Écrivains Réunis).
Artists like electrical guitar player Max Sokolinski and DJ Gini from Syck Talent set the backdrop for our meals; their modern psychedelia providing a vibey underlay without drowning out the discussion.
” I sat at every table in the restaurant to ensure I could still hear the person across from me with the live music playing,” Jamal tells me.
These are the kinds of musicians who will use the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop– which has incredible views of the Eiffel Tower on one side and Notre Dame on the other– as soon as spring and summertime hits. Paris is a famously low city (read: not a whole lot of high-rise buildings), so the unusual ninth-floor roof gazes over the Haussman buildings, providing unblocked landmark views from among the highest al fresco bars in the city.
Similar to in New York, any generous outdoor area is rather the hospitality flex in Paris– and the rooftop isn’t the only bragging right at Dame des Arts. A sensational outdoor terrace, off the dining-room, lined with palm trees (yes, palm trees in Paris), finishes the alfresco bundle. As Jamal puts it, the “breathtaking roof terrace neglecting all the major monuments, ground-floor garden, and wall-to-wall visitor room windows unite the inside your home and outdoors as one experience, effortlessly throughout the hotel.”
The bar, in addition to serving up French red wines (I was partial to Provence-sourced Super Schluck vin d’orange), has an impressive selection of mezcals and tequilas to match the restaurant’s Mexican-inspired menu. And I have to state, as somebody from Los Angeles, a city understood for its Mexican food, I was pleased with head chef Othoniel Alvarez’s mushroom mole, tuna tostada topped with flash-fried leeks, and churros served with a Paris-Brest-inspired praline dipping sauce. It assists that Alvarez grew up in Tenancingo, a Mexican state south of Mexico City.
Of the 109 rooms, 17 have beautiful (and generously sized, especially by Paris requirements) terraces with Eiffel Tower views. More than half of the spaces at the hotel are “signature suites,” which are somewhat bigger at 200 square feet.
The Raphael Navot– developed interiors pair natural materials– light chestnut ridged paneling in the hotel spaces, and rich black floors in the lobby made of burnt-then-laminated wood– with velour-swathed furnishings. The furnishings is sourced from all over the world, Jamal confirms, but his favorite pieces are the Roche Bobois ones created specifically for Raphael Navot, consisting of the oblong Moon Couch in the lobby (which retails for $40,000 to the public).
Not just is Dame des Arts the very first opening in Paris’s Year of Hotels, it’s the first of 3 EQ Group openings in the City of Light. The hospitality company will open another hotel this summer– the train-inspired Hotel Les Grands Voyageurs in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, as well as a hotel just outside the city in Boulogne. Find out more about Hôtel Dame des Arts and book your room at damedesarts.com.