Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris

In August 1944, days after the liberation of Paris, General Eisenhower took rooms at the Royal Monceau on avenue Hoche, and the hotel was for a time the address where the Allied command slept. Two years later Ho Chi Minh stayed during the Fontainebleau negotiations. Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris has lived on that kind of story since 1928, and the 2010 rebuilding by Philippe Starck made a point of keeping the memory while changing almost everything else.

History

The hotel opened in 1928 at 37 avenue Hoche, in the wide streets laid out between the Étoile and the Parc Monceau. Its first decades were those of a fashionable inter-war house: Ernest Hemingway, Walt Disney, Ray Charles and Madonna all appear in its guest books at one date or another. By the 2000s the building needed more than a refurbishment. The Qatari group Katara Hospitality bought it, closed it in 2008 and, in a gesture that became famous, invited guests to a demolition party at which they could swing a sledgehammer at the old walls before the works began.

The hotel reopened on 18 October 2010 under the Raffles flag, the brand's first property in Europe. In 2013 Atout France granted it the Palace distinction.

Architecture and design

The stone facade of 1928 is the only part of the exterior that was kept. Inside, the interiors are Starck's own, executed with his studio, and they are among his most restrained. Rooms are lined in pale wood and oak, with guitars left on stands in the suites, bedside lamps that double as sculpture, and a note pad and sketching pencil on every desk. The long bar, Le Bar Long, has a table that runs the width of the room with lamps hanging low over it. The lobby doubles as a passage between the two wings, with the art bookshop, La Librairie des Arts, opening off it.

Rooms and suites

There are 149 rooms and suites, including 54 suites and three signature apartments at the top of the house. The Royal Monceau is one of the few Paris palaces to have made contemporary art part of the room offer: an art concierge arranges gallery visits and studio access, the Art District gallery on the ground floor holds changing exhibitions, and the corridors hang with photographs and prints. Several suites look across avenue Hoche towards the Arc de Triomphe.

Dining

Il Carpaccio, the Italian restaurant, holds a Michelin star and sits in a winter-garden room decorated with shells. Matsuhisa Paris, opened in 2016, brought Nobu Matsuhisa's Japanese-Peruvian cooking to the city; the restaurant opens onto the terrace in the inner garden. Le Bar Long serves through the day. The pastry counter is by Pierre Hermé, who created the hotel's dessert menu at the reopening and still supplies the macarons and the Ispahan at the bar. Breakfast is served in La Cuisine, the all-day room.

Wellness

The Spa My Blend by Clarins occupies the basement with a white-tiled 23-metre pool, one of the longest in a Paris hotel, plus a hammam, treatment rooms and a fitness studio. The Cinéma Katara, a 99-seat screening room on the lower floor, is used for private screenings, press days and the hotel's own film programme; it is the only cinema of its kind inside a Paris palace.

Weddings and events

The hotel has a ballroom and a series of meeting rooms on the first floor, used for weddings, fashion-week dinners, product launches and board meetings. The Cinéma Katara is booked for film premieres and conferences, and Matsuhisa's garden terrace for summer receptions. The art gallery and bookshop are sometimes privatised for cocktails. Room capacities for each configuration are confirmed by the events office.

Location

Avenue Hoche runs between the Arc de Triomphe and the Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement. The Champs-Élysées is five minutes on foot, the Faubourg Saint-Honoré boutiques ten. Charles de Gaulle-Étoile station, with RER A and three metro lines, is at the top of the avenue. Charles de Gaulle airport is around 40 minutes by car. Among the luxury hotels in Paris, this is the one that sits closest to the Étoile and furthest from the Seine.