Hôtel Plaza Athénée

Walk up avenue Montaigne from the Seine and the red awnings announce the hotel before the name does. Hôtel Plaza Athénée opened in Paris in 1913, when the avenue was still a residential street of private mansions rather than the couture address it became. Its position has shaped everything since: Christian Dior chose number 30, directly opposite, for his house in 1946, and the fashion crowd has treated the hotel as its canteen and its address ever since.

History

The hotel was built between 1911 and 1913 and opened in 1913 on the site of an earlier establishment of the same name on rue Scribe. Through the twentieth century it belonged to the group of grand Paris houses that also included the George V. In 1996 it was bought by the Brunei Investment Agency, whose hotel arm became Dorchester Collection in 2006, placing the Plaza Athénée alongside The Dorchester in London, Le Meurice in Paris and the Beverly Hills Hotel.

In 2011 the French tourism ministry created the Palace distinction, a grade above five stars, and the Plaza Athénée was in the first group to receive it. From October 2013 to August 2014 the hotel closed for the largest works in its history, annexing three neighbouring buildings and adding rooms, suites and a renewed spa. It reopened with Alain Ducasse still at the stove of the gastronomic restaurant he had run there since 2000. In 2021 Jean Imbert took over the restaurant, now named after him.

Architecture and design

The street elevation is Parisian stone with wrought-iron balconies, the red awnings its one flourish. The plan wraps around the Cour Jardin, an inner courtyard planted with ivy and geraniums that doubles as a restaurant terrace in warm months. Interiors follow the Louis XVI and Regency vocabulary of the grand Paris houses, with room decoration refreshed in the 2014 works. Upper-floor rooms on the avenue side look across the roofs to the Eiffel Tower.

Le Relais Plaza, the brasserie, dates from 1936 and keeps its Art Deco room, inspired by the liner Normandie that had entered service the year before. It is the one interior in the hotel that has barely changed.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has about 208 rooms and suites across the main building and the annexes added in 2014. The grandest suites face the Eiffel Tower, and the hotel markets a group of them under that name. Room decoration is classical, with fabrics in the hotel's red and cream.

Dining

Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée is the gastronomic restaurant, in the room Ducasse occupied for two decades. Le Relais Plaza serves brasserie cooking in its 1936 setting and has long been the lunch table of the avenue's fashion houses. La Galerie, the long gallery off the lobby, serves breakfast, tea and light meals through the day, and Le Bar occupies the former bar room on the avenue side. The Cour Jardin opens as a restaurant terrace in summer.

Wellness

Dior Spa Plaza Athénée is the house's beauty institute, run with the fashion house across the street, with treatment rooms and a fitness room. There is no swimming pool.

Weddings and events

The hotel holds receptions, dinners and meetings in its salons and in the Cour Jardin in season. It is used for fashion-week presentations and private dinners by the avenue's houses. Capacities are not published in the sources we hold and are not given here.

Location

The hotel stands at 25 avenue Montaigne in the 8th arrondissement, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine, with the Pont de l'Alma and the Eiffel Tower a few minutes' walk away. Métro Alma-Marceau and Franklin D. Roosevelt serve the avenue. Paris-Charles de Gaulle is the nearest major airport. Among luxury hotels in Paris it is the one most tied to a single street.