As Paris staggers into this century in hotpants and platform heels, this soignée city manor offers the gentle reminder of the cultivated glamour that’s made the city so enduringly iconic. Built in the belle epoque (yet sold to the Sultan of Brunei’s Dorchester Collection in the 1990s), the Plaza has become a symbol of Rive Droite chic, glorifying an era of gilt and marble for a clientele of full-lipped grande dames and their lap dogs. It’s hard not to swoon at the art nouveau façade, festooned with 1,900 red geraniums. Brought in as an homage to erstwhile resident Marlene Dietrich, whose lover often had them placed in her suite, they’ve set the scene for the world’s most dramatic exits (see Carrie’s swan song in the Sex and the City finale). Expensive-smelling staff swoosh from the ivied courtyard through the bustling pillared lobby to the Dior spa in coordinating red accessories.
Overall score 8/10
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Rooms and suites
Score 7/10
No one can deny the attention to a good night’s sleep here. The smallest bed is a queen, swathed in linens with discernibly hefty thread count and lovingly turned down while you’re out. Many find guilty pleasure in all those pocket-sized Guerlain toiletries in the marble bathrooms, and the host of attendants on call to bring fresh milk for your Nespresso — though fumbling for the correct light switch might trigger the call button, resulting in a parade at your door. The obvious USP is the view over Avenue Montaigne, pivoted toward the Seine. Rooms on this side of the building get romantic iron Juliet balconies with views to the Eiffel Tower — but be warned, these cost £300 more on average. The rest face the courtyard, remarkably leafy as consolations go. Regardless of their aspect, the suites are accessed by a series of special lifts, ensuring you’ll rarely wait nor share. But it’s hard to know where your £1,500 is going in the (admittedly sizeable) courtyard-facing singles.
Food and drink
Score 9/10
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There are five dining options, plus a chic wood-panelled bar, but the highlight is the Michelin-star Jean Imbert dining room, with its ‘elegant’ dress code and hushed ambience to match. Restaurants this delightfully palatial, with actual candelabra balancing out the crystal chandeliers, are a dying breed. Ditto the menu, with its lobster thermidor and ‘Marie-Antoinette caviar’ (both around £125), served with a cloche reveal. The blossom-adorned asparagus vichyssoise might provoke the TikTokker in you. And if Paris could be bottled, it would taste like the ‘Catherine de Medici foie gras’, a velvety duvet for the tongue. But do tweak your expectations for breakfast, if you live for a buffet. The Plaza’s style is more relaxed, congenial and less hectic than luxury hotels tend to be, served to order with the requisite viennoiserie basket. Coffee arrives with reassuring punctuality.
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What else is there?
Score 7/10
Denizens of the in-house spa do not suffer limp-fingered masseurs — and they don’t leave less than 10 years younger, either. Its newest therapy room is the Light Suite has sunlight LEDs that balance circadian and chronobiological rhythms, aimed at energising the body or inducing sleep — book accordingly. This being a Dior-designed facility, you can have a D-Waves bum detox or micro-dermabrasion, but there’s no pool — so a swim is off the cards.
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Where is it?
Score 7/10
Here in the silken embrace of the Vuitton and Prada flagships on the Avenue Montaigne, you won’t travel far for luxury shopping nor the cinematic delights along the Seine. That said, restaurants and bars (and the resulting ordinary Parisians) in the immediate vicinity are limited. That’s what the hatted doormen are for: taxis will appear at the flick of a wrist and squeeze in among the chauffeured SUVs.
Price room-only doubles from £1,796
Restaurant mains from £86
Family-friendly Y
Accessible Y
Ellen Himelfarb was a guest of Plaza Athénée (dorchestercollection.com)
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