La Fantaisie

There is something faintly perverse about opening a hotel devoted to escape on rue Cadet. Outside the door are cheesemongers, bakeries, cafés and little shops that make this one of the most agreeable streets in the 9th arrondissement. Much of it is pedestrianised, so people wander rather than hurry. It is exactly the sort of Paris visitors hope to discover, usually after several days of looking in the wrong places. La Fantaisie has decided you might prefer to forget it is there.

The idea has a certain historical logic. Rue Cadet takes its name from Jean and Jacques Cadet, gardeners whose land once occupied this part of Paris. Martin Brudnizki, the Swedish designer based in London, has taken their old profession almost literally. Behind the hotel's modern green façade lies a proper courtyard garden, with trees, flowers and a restaurant opening onto it beneath glass. The seventy-three rooms and suites are full of botanical patterns, soft greens, sunny yellows and cheerful pinks. At moments the place resembles a particularly well-funded English country house that has somehow missed the train to the countryside.

It is a lovely trick, although the garden itself needs no decorating. Sit there for lunch and you are surrounded by planting rather than Parisian stone, with the restaurant's great windows holding the greenery like a picture. The kitchen has had a less settled life than the flowers. La Fantaisie opened with Dominique Crenn and her Californian-inspired Golden Poppy, but that partnership ended in 2024. The restaurant now serves colourful, generous seasonal food without a famous chef's name above the door. It is perhaps better suited to the place: lunch can take as long as the afternoon allows, and the garden is quite capable of being the main attraction.

Upstairs, Brudnizki has apparently decided that plain white walls are a failure of imagination. There are flowers on wallpaper, plump upholstered headboards and colours that would cheer up an English November. The private rooms are a little calmer than the public spaces, but still thoroughly dressed for the occasion. Comfort Rooms measure twenty to twenty-two square metres, which is not much space in which to admire all that decoration. A Deluxe offers twenty-eight. If you have come for the greenery, choose a garden-facing room deliberately; the thirty-eight-square-metre Junior Suite Terrace opens onto a private terrace above it. Street-facing rooms have their own appeal, but rue Cadet has a lively daily rhythm. The side of the building matters more than the wallpaper.

Deep underground, the hotel has found another way to postpone the outside world. The Holidermie spa offers four baths of different temperatures and purposes, along with a hammam, traditional sauna and infrared sauna. You can move from hot water to cold, then reconsider your decision in the bubbling bath. None of this is about swimming lengths. It is about finding increasingly elaborate reasons not to put your clothes back on. The spa is also open to outside visitors by reservation, and children under fourteen cannot use the bathing facilities.

Then, seven floors above the street, Paris finally gets its invitation back. The rooftop bar is planted with flowers and lemon trees, with the city's roofs spread out around it. It opens from late afternoon and welcomes Parisians as well as hotel guests, so the atmosphere can become rather more social than the country-house bedrooms suggest. A cocktail among the trees, with the Eiffel Tower somewhere beyond the rooftops, is an agreeable way of admitting that the city was worth coming for after all.

The fantasy is not without a price. This is a five-star hotel with fairly compact entry rooms, and some of its most appealing spaces are shared with people who have come only for dinner or a drink. Those hoping for the absolute silence of a rural retreat may discover that a Parisian rooftop has other plans. Yet there is something wonderfully unpretentious about the whole arrangement. The hotel does not insist that you admire a grand history or behave as though luxury is a solemn responsibility.

Eventually you have to go outside. Someone is buying bread, somebody else is choosing cheese, and a café table has just become free. After all the velvet, flowers and carefully arranged escapes, rue Cadet looks even more inviting than before. You may find yourself wondering why you spent so much time trying to get away from it.