8.7Rue de la Verrerie, ParisSince 2023
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The family behind Le Grand Mazarin knows a great deal about holidays. Its other hotels are a ski hotel in Méribel, a cluster of stone houses near Mont Ventoux and a hotel in Saint-Tropez with the spirit of the 1950s and 60s. The family likes its hotels to feel like places where it would happily spend a holiday itself. When they opened their first city hotel in 2023, on a corner of the Marais, they brought that same idea to Paris: a place you do not really need to leave.
You can see it from the first evening. Below ground there is a pool for hotel guests, with a hammam and a jacuzzi, beneath a ceiling the artist Jacques Merle decorated in the spirit of Jean Cocteau. The restaurant opens onto a winter garden. There is a cocktail bar and, downstairs, a rather lively little place called Le Petit Bazar. Upstairs, the designer Martin Brudnizki has filled 61 rooms and suites with colour and pattern: tapestry canopies over the beds, herringbone floors, flea-market finds. It is a hotel that wants you to have a good time, and assumes you will want to have it here.
The restaurant is where the house meets its neighbourhood. It is called Boubalé, a Yiddish term of endearment that the grandmothers of the two sisters behind the hotel used when they were children. The kitchen now looks towards the Levant and the Mediterranean, with generous dishes made for sharing. The restaurant draws Parisians as well as hotel guests, and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings DJs bring a party atmosphere that can continue downstairs at Le Petit Bazar. There is nothing particularly solemn about dinner here.
What a stay gives you is a holiday rhythm in the middle of Paris. Mornings can start in the pool, afternoons belong to the streets of the Marais, and evenings come home to dinner and a drink. On a lively night there may be dancing downstairs; on a quieter one, you can simply go up to bed. For a long weekend, a celebration or a few days with friends, it does what its owners' mountain and beach hotels do: it makes the hotel part of the trip rather than the place where the trip pauses.
That spirit has its price. The décor is exuberant from top to bottom, and anyone who likes white walls and silence will find it busy. The bars and restaurant draw a crowd, and the Marais outside is packed at weekends. This is not a hotel for slipping in and out unnoticed or for a week of quiet work. It suits travellers who want Paris to feel like a holiday, who enjoy a good restaurant and a lively evening, and who like having somewhere cheerful to come back to after a day out.
You could spend the whole weekend exploring the Marais and hardly see the rest of Paris. With a hotel like this to return to, that would be a perfectly enjoyable way to spend it.
On the ceiling
Narcissus, painted over the pool.
Brudnizki's rooms are built around the bed: a tapestry canopy in the manner of Aubusson, parquet laid in Hungarian point, painted cupboards and lamps found at the flea market. The old building gives the rooms irregular shapes, so no two are quite the same.
Boubalé's covered patio is the brightest table in the house, with painted walls and windows by the artist Sophia Pega. It serves from breakfast to late, and on Sundays brunch arrives at the table in three rounds.
Le Bar de Boubalé opens at five, with a cocktail list inspired by the Thousand and One Nights and stools in green and red along a carved counter. It stays open until two, to guests and to anyone else from the Marais.
Le Petit Bazar is the hotel's hidden basement room. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday the DJs who start during dinner upstairs carry on down here, and the dancing goes on until two. Some evenings it hosts small concerts and talks instead.
At a glance
Where
17 rue de la Verrerie, on the corner of the rue des Archives, 4th arrondissement; the Hôtel de Ville metro a few minutes away
Why this one
Green stripes below and a painted Narcissus above: a morning swim is rare in this part of Paris, and rarer still in a room like this.
Tapestry canopies, patterned walls and flea-market finds: Brudnizki has made a hotel that is cheerful from the lobby to the top floor.
Dinner at Boubalé, a drink at the bar and dancing downstairs: on a weekend evening the hotel is its own neighbourhood.
The Edit Notes
The Classic rooms and the smaller Superiors measure about 20 m², and the old building makes some shapes awkward. For more than two nights, book a Deluxe (up to about 33 m²) or a Parisian Junior Suite, which runs from about 30 to 40 m² and sleeps up to four.
Rooms look either onto the streets of the Marais or inward over the winter garden. The hotel describes the inward view as the quieter one; with the bars busy at weekends, it is the one to request if you want an early night.
The pool, hammam and jacuzzi are for hotel guests only and are booked through the concierge, from half past seven in the morning until nine at night. The gym stays open around the clock for anyone who prefers a late session.
The Mazarin Suite sleeps four and connects to a Deluxe or Superior and a Parisian Junior Suite, for up to ten people in all. For a birthday weekend with friends, it is the closest the hotel comes to a house of your own.
The price question
Le Grand Mazarin charges five-star prices for rooms that are often smaller than the price suggests. What the money really buys is everything around them: a pool most Paris hotels cannot offer, a restaurant and two bars where the evening happens without a taxi, and a house designed to make a short stay feel like a holiday. If you will use all of that, it is good value. If you only need a bed between museums, it is not.
Book it for a long weekend, a celebration or a few days with friends, when the hotel is part of the trip. Look elsewhere if you need quiet to work, prefer white walls or would rather slip in and out unnoticed.
Le Pavillon de la Reine
A few streets away on the Place des Vosges: a courtyard garden, a starred restaurant and a much quieter house.
Cheval Blanc Paris
On the Seine at La Samaritaine: a 30-metre pool and the full palace treatment, at palace prices.
The Extra Edit
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Ask for a stay and a person takes it from there. Any hotel privileges that apply, and a personal Extra arranged by us, are confirmed with your bookable quote.
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How the grade is made
The Edit score is the editor's grade for the level of the hotel, out of ten. It weighs what the outside judges say (Michelin Keys, Forbes Travel Guide, World's 50 Best Hotels, Atout France palace status, La Liste), what changed in the last two years and what guests write now; where these and the editor's own judgement disagree, the editor decides. A spa with a pool worth booking for adds up to two tenths.
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